I admit it. I have a fickle relationship with onions. I want them on some things but not others. I want them on some things some days but not others. I like them cooked sometimes and raw other times. I do have rules about them, though. Here are a few:
- First and foremost, I have a very low threshold for them. You can easily put too many of them on or in anything I eat.
- On a burger, they can be raw or grilled but they have to be chopped. Sliced into rings won't do.
- Onion rings, lightly-battered and freshly-cooked, are excellent. Once they cool down and the batter starts sliding off of the onion, I'm done.
- Cooked in most dishes, they're fine and hard to overdo. Hamburger steak with onions gives me fierce heartburn but just try to keep me from eating it. Dishes like red beans and rice, beef or chicken stew, or crawfish pie can't be done without them.
- Potato salad, on the other hand, is just fine without onions, thankyouverymuch. I have grown into the ability to take or leave potato salad with onions but I still prefer mine without. There were with and without factions in the Ferrara house. "You won't even know they're in there" was always responded to with "Then why put them in there?" It was hopeless. Mom and Dad started making two batches.
Got any rules of your own about onions? Do others in your household share them?
I recall how long it used to take me to eat anything with chopped onions, celery, or garlic (if I saw it) in dishes because I had to pick it all out first. I'd have a neat pile on the side of the plate with what I called "foreign matter". I still do that with mushrooms - eat around them. Otherwise, I love onions. People have gone crazy for my potato salad - which I secretly think is the minced to almost juice onions that nobody suspects are in there. Yesterday, I chopped and fried potatoes with onions and garlic to serve with my scrambled eggs with cheese. And that's how I order my hashbrowns at Waffle House - scattered and smothered (which means with onions)
There's a contingent of humanoids who believe that onion-haters hate the texture, not the flavor. This humanoid is not of that persuasion.
The only onion I will eat is an onion ring deep fried of course. I like the flavor of tem!!
I will also not eat anything with mushrooms! I hate them!!!
I like onions. Deep fried. Carmelized. Chopped. Sliced. Raw. Cooked. In food. On the side. And especially in potato salad.
It wasn't always so, though. My mother learned various ways of hiding them, but if I saw one, or caught one on my tongue, or if the flavor/essence was overdone, I was out of there. When I moved to New Orleans, Grandma Ferrara had a heavy hand with onions and I could hardly eat anything she fixed. Very soon, though, she started fixing my plate of food minus onion or onion flavor. As I grew up, as I matured, as I quarreled with my own table of people, I learned to like and then positively love onions.
Your essay was excellent, Robbie, but what brought it up?
Cooked mushrooms in gravy as part of another dish is the only way I like mushrooms, Beth. We have a few recipes that call for Cream of Mushroom Soup and I like it in various dishes. I also like Cream of Mushroom Soup.
What brought it up, Mom, was the two Wendy's Double Stacks that I bought yesterday that had sliced raw onions on them. They overpowered the sandwich and I don't like picking them off because its so messy. I ended up sliding them out of the sandwich anyway ... along with the catchup, mustard, and mayo that slid off.
You pretty much summed it up for me Robbie. Are we related?!! I feel exactly the same way and couldn't have said it better. I also feel that way about tomatoes!
I must make an ammendment to my previous post!! I do like onions, cooked, soups, stews. If there is a raw onion I will not eat it or the dish it was in!!!
As far as mushrooms if a recipe calls for them like "cream of" I will add cream of chicken soup or omit them entirely!!
I love onions - white, yellow, green, Bermuda, Vidalia, pearl. I like them cooked or raw and I like them in everything. I remember not liking them in Mama's potato salad growing up. I remember not liking the crunch of them. I started eating green onions in potato salad at Miss Barbara's house. She made the best potato salad in the world. I have copied it, but mine has never been as good as hers was.