Let me know what onion tests you want to do at home! Thank you again to Made In for sponsoring this video, check out the cookware I use here ➡️ madein.cc/0424-ethan Video Notes & Corrections: 1. 13:30 - Shallot water content should be 79.8%
Pearl onions are harvested after ninety days of growth and don't reach full maturity. Its the same with cipollini onions but pearl onions are either white or red onions while cipollini onions are typically sweet onions. They all are unique cultivars of their respective onions but the main purpose of these onions are to be grown quickly and then stored or preserved. Pickled pearl onions are great.
That's a really silly statistical question, because you can taste PLENTY of difference in any given onion. The types could still narrow it down where and when you get that seasonal onion they cultivated, not just factory-farm them for a color and a bland taste. You can't just pick a cultivar for a GUARANTEED reliability unless you already guarantee that the "normal' one is absolute lowest common denominator. If breeds of onions DO end up having some great regular difference, it's because they manufactured them that way and picked which genus they want to market which way. Food flavors should be encounterd as cultural expereinces, like woodstock going better or worse. Current culture is fixated on RECORDINGS like hearing the Jimi Hendrix star-spangled banner. You don't sing songs to each other but pay ad money on what gets to be on your mixtape.
The one thing you didn’t answer is if they are 90 days of growth in the second season or the first? So are they grown for one season and then put in the ground as a set and grown for 90 days or are they planted from seed and grown for 90 days?
Ethan, please do a butter deep dive. In Belgian cuisine everything is baked with butter rather than (olive) oil. We use a LOT of butter so I really want to know if it's worth buying more expensive brands or not
I use cheap butter for most baked things or frying, and expensive stuff for using cold (mostly with bread as a side), where the butter flavor is central to the dish(french toast, enriching a sauce), or fancy baked goods. I try to keep 10 lbs of butter in the freezer of various kinds at all times, I've pretty much done the butter episode on my own by virtue of loving my butter! Land-o-Lakes and Challenge are my go-to brands for good butter. I'm not a fan of Irish butter, but that's personal preference on the funky flavor of it.
The thing is. In Mexico we use white onions because that is the only onion we can buy, or is the cgeapest one. But I have never seen anyone complain or say its not mexican if it doesn't have white onion. Only Americans complain about such a thing.
It's insane to think about how much effort and meticulous plan there would have been behind this video. I can't believe I watched it all throughout without getting bored. Honestly, not a single minute is a waste when watching such a top notch work. Being a chemistry student, it made me ponder upon and ask many questions in my head on these complexes of cooking. I learned a lot... and will definitely be going through other videos in this series.
I don't even like onions, but I can't stop watching! I am learning so much. It will help me cook better for others! BTW I have a chemistry minor. It's a tough degree. Good on you, and good luck! 😃
Gardener here who has grown a lot of onions. To answer question Pearl Onions, Cipollinis, and Baby Onions are different things. Pearl onions are, almost always, a different species from your regular onion. Sometimes baby onions are labeled pearl onions but this is not true. Pearl Onions have the scientific classification name Allium Ampeloprasum and a "regular onion" have the name Allium Cepa. Pearl onions do not grow much bigger if grown into the second season. They at least do not grow to the size of a regular onion. Cipollinis are a specific variety of onion. Baby Onions are just normal onions. All three onions are harvested right after the first season so the right answer is A.
Not something that really matters, but I have a specific brain tick that forces me to point this out even though I know it's annoying, but with scientific names, you don't capitalize the species name. You're also supposed to always italicize them, so most properly it would be _Allium ampeloprasum_ but frankly who cares about the italicization. Also for shortening the genus, you take just the first letter and out a period behind it, so _A. cepa._ this is why it's technically most properly written as _T. rex,_ not T-Rex, for example.
@@paulbrickler You're not supposed to grow them for 2 years, if you do that they'll flower and be ruined. Whether growing from sets or seeds you need to harvest in the first year, seeds just need to be started earlier in the year to give them time to grow before bulbing.
I'm able to get massive bulbs in the first year, but I start the seeds indoors in January and live in a northern latitude so we get really long days in the summer which may help.
@@TheSkillotron At 4:50 he says the tops die and the bulb can be left underground or cultivated and replanted the next season. I'm not sure what to believe now.
@@MizJaniceResinArtEthan's channel made me skyrocket my cooking skills. I'm still novice objectively but a much more wisened and experienced novice. But my family thinks of me as some pro chef and keep telling me to open a restaurant. Screw that, I'm never working food service again, especially if I'm the one running the business. That industry is horrific. Hellish even.
It's actually over a TV hour, bc TV shows give you about 42 minutes of content per hour. (And some of that is repeating the last minute of content from before the commercial.) As in, you're righter than the critique who'll eventually show up even realizes if they never watched that retired invention, TV.
As a Libyan I can confirm we eat a hell of a lot of onions. Basically 90% of Libyan dishes (at least the ones I cook) starts with onions garlic and tomato. We even have a dish called "onion" in Arabic or 'Busla'. It's like a tomatoey, onion-based sauce you can put on rice or pasta and it's DELICIOUS. Basically everything is a variation of the same onion sauce with maybe different spices lol. Anything you can think of (beans, fish, okra, meat, other veggies, etc.) is cooked in an onion and tomato-based sauce.
Man I'd probably die of starvation in Libya, biting into any onion other than shallots makes me want to hurl. Love the flavor, it's just the juicy crunch in the middle of a completely different texture I can't handle. Shallots cook up soft enough that it's not a problem with those.
@@missingaria2503 yeah my mom and ex and most women seem to not like onions lol, than again I seen a video women taste buds are more sensitive and can taste more than a man's tongue.
As an Indian who recently moved to America, I have found that shallots are much closer in flavor to the red onions that we get in India than the red onions that you get here.
Interesting! I have been using shallots in Indian recipes ever since it was all I had in the house once, and really liked the results. Thanks for confirming I wasn’t crazy haha
This is the type of stuff that makes this channel so interesting, refreshing, and useful. Applaud the effort and comprehensiveness that went into this. You're a rockstar, seriously.
In late 90s early 2000s I found Alton Brown. His butter episode just on the specific properties of butter really impressed me. That one 22 min of info explained how butter works and then I could extrapolate it into all the dishes I ever cooked in the future. Ethan here is doing the same, he is not making a recipe but letting us use our knowledge as how to use an onion under all situation not just that 1 recipe How, what, where. why and when of onions
@@labla8940 - The "Good Eats Reloaded" editions he did on Cooking Channel were even better as he corrected errors and misinformation from the original series. I never saw "Good Eats: The Return" episodes as our cable company didn't carry Food Network. However, I could not take the pandemic home version, "Quarantine Quitchen". He fell off the rails, in my opinion, though I loved the chemistry lab countertops he had in Georgia.
I’m an Iowa State Master gardener. I grow onions from seed, not sets (just a personal choice), and they’re harvested that year. Onions only need a full biennial cycle to produce seeds, but 2 years are not necessary to produce the onions we eat. Also, there’s a HUGE world of onions you can grow yourself beyond what we can buy in a store. 🙂
Aussie here, yea, me and my family grow a patch of about 20 onions in the back yard each year at home from seeds, its like a 7 or 8 month grow. They only last us about 2 weeks 😂😂😂 but it's fun to grow your own every now and then
@@krishdeliciousful If I’m buying, the average white onion usually. If I’m planting, a variety often called Utah Storage Onion or Utah Spanish Onion. It’s a yellow onion, so not great in raw applications, but it really lives up to its name. Properly cured and stored hanging in knotted nylons, I’ve had them regularly last for 4 to 5 months in a dry, cool, dark basement. 🙂
I grow from my saved seed a heritage sweet onion, Ailsa Craig, gets huge and so mild you can eat it raw. It stores until march usually. I love it fried in lard until carmalized as a side. My favorite veg.😊
This was actually super fascinating to me! I had received shallot in a Hello Fresh box once, and my reaction was genuinely, "shallot!? What is this? Fancy pants onions??" I used them because I was curious, and after eating them, it got me wondering if they had actually contributed to the dish differently from a regular yellow onion (the dish was totally delicious). That was maybe 5 years ago. Seeing this, I can now see why the shallot was included. They actually do make a difference! It also confirmed to me why certain soups I make are far more delicious with a sweet onion as opposed to a white onion or even a yellow onion. The sweet onion offers a more mild flavor that's subdued, whereas a white onion can almost overwhelm the soup. Very, very cool. Thanks!!!
I want to see you do this with the different types of potatoes, Mister. We all eat them and it may take more than one video for them but I believe it's needed. They are as humble as the onion and yet used pretty constantly, especially as a budget friendly food that packs a mix of nutrients and comfort.
Since we always get the name on the bag in Germany I have started to really not which potatoes is best for what. I love fried potatoes and it really makes a difference.
@@Chris-N916 Well, sir, here's your video then. I didn't expect this to be such a controversial take that someone on a food video would find fault in the word potato. Excuse me while I beg forgiveness of the masses before I am stoned to death.
GIVE ME THE PHD!! Seriously though, I absolutely love these deep dives. There are so many "opinion" videos from very good chefs, but very few actual objective videos. Thanks so much for all the hard work, it is much appreciated!
This section is odd for another reason - animo acids (proteins) and carbs don't all taste the same, even with aroma removed from the equation. The macro balance chart is both too much and not enough information. Onions and apples are both mostly water with some carbs and almost no protein, sure, but that's true of all fruits and vegetables and they don't all taste similarly. Onions and apples "taste" similar with your nose plugged because they have a similar watery and crunchy texture on top of similar levels of simple and complex carbs. As you discuss later in the video, our experience of food is multi-sensory so texture factors into what we colloquially call "taste". Cotton candy is 100% pure sugar with flavorless food coloring, but the airy texture makes the taste experience different from a spoonful of table sugar.
I literally just watched a video where someone said "use what you have on hand, it doesn't matter" and immediately thought to myself "Hm, wonder if Ethan has a video about this one". Lo and behold, you do! As always, mad respect to how thoroughly you explain and test everything, always love your videos!
@@DIEKALSTER8 I wanna think it was "Food With Chetna" actually? Could've been anyone though, I feel like I most often hear people say to just use what you have on hand rather than insisting it has to be one or another type of onion
I kind of enjoy the irony that these plants developed sulfur compounds to deter them from being eaten so that they can survive - and then humans came around and thought they tasted delicious and decided to propagate them. They became evolutionarily successful by doing the exact opposite of what they intended.
the way i grew up is that white onion was for stews, soups, long cooking. yellow onion for sauteing. sweet onion for caramelization. red onion will be left raw. and shallot is another sauteing onion but its mainly for rich and/or creamy meals
Should be called "Ethan's Cooking Lab" channel. Man you are thorough as heck. Good jon Ethan. You go above and beyond in your experiments and I appreciate that. Edit: *job
It was about 28 mins for me plus a 30 second skip on the ad about pans.... Speed watch at 1.7x. Most YT videos can be sped watched and you wont miss anything.
Chipolini are a specific Italian cultivar of Onion, they are also not really small, I've grown them and other then being flat they can grow the same size as regular yellow onions. Spring onions are indeed imature 2nd year onions, generally the result from thinning a row of planted onions so that the remainder have room to bulb properly. Vidalia Onions are not JUST from Georgia, they need to come from a specific set of COUNTIES of Georgia, centered on the country of Vidalia itself. It is soil conditions which are said to produce extra mild onions, likely due to lower sulfur content.
We ALWAYS keep two jars (red wine & white wine vinegar) of pickled red onions in the fridge. Recently we added a mixture shallots to the onions. Not sure if it really tastes different but they go with everything!
Most onions are grown from seed these days and harvested after one growing season. Also the pungent flavor can be found in all colors and are selected out depending on market expectation for a specific appearance. (source: I work as an assistant for a small onion breeder )
grew up with yellow onions maybe cause they were the most available. as a kid i hated now i love them. funny i ate onion ring(Snack) so dried form totally different!
I was looking for this comment. Grew up near Walla Walla. I wonder if the way they grow those is part of why their shelf life is so short. They're started at the end of one growing season, overwintered, and then harvested at the end of that growing season. So technically, 2nd year. Gardening, I was taught that doing that or planting sets, would give them the chance/signal to flower, which is what makes shelf life short.
I've seen people suggest adding a splash of water to caramelized onions as they cook whenever the pan gets too dry, but after I tried that a few times, a came up with a tweak that I like better: using a splash of beer instead! They get very dark, sweet, and flavorful, and since it's just little splashes over high heat over a long cook time, the alcohol has plenty of time to cook off.
One thing to note about onions is that while home gardeners often use sets to grow onions, farms go from seed to full bulb in one season. This takes longer but produces bigger onions without the risk of them becoming woody (onions flower in the second year, so sometimes a set will produce flowers, and if this occurs, the onion becomes woody.) So likely for those smaller onion cultivars you talked about they are either planted at greater density and/or harvested earlier, but certainly within one season as it is only really home gardeners who grow onions over two seasons.
For most Malaysian kitchens, we always have a supply of shallots, red onions, and yellow onions. For some dishes, we use all three e.g. using all three in sambal ikan bilis gives the sauce a robust flavor profile. I always just did what my MIL taught me to do but now I kindof understand why.
A note about the other onions: If you want onion greens, do chives. If you want both fresh onion greens and cooked onion bulb, do scallions. If you want big stewed chunks of onion for a soup or stew, that's where leeks come into play. Also, I share your passion for shallots. It's nice to get a little bit of garlicky flavor without having to deal with peeling and slicing/mincing garlic. Also, as a single man who lives alone, it's nice to be able to grab a single bulb of shallot for a single dish, instead of having to chop up 1/3-1/2 of a normal sized onion and put the rest in a ziploc for the next day.
We use a garlic squisher ... ok, properly a garlic _press,_ but we use it to *squish* the garlic ... instead of mincing. You get the same result, but it's a lot faster.
I love leeks, I always eat it with a white, or cheese sauce 😋 Shallots were something we never ate as a child, they were really expensive, and hence never buy them as an adult. I think I should give them a try!!
Thank you this video is absolutely amazing and I love how well put together the video is all around and you go the extra mile to answer as many questions as possible and put in a crazy amount of effort in to your work your good at what you do and you got a new sub thank you
Indeed. A burger, like most dishes, needs the right mix of ingredients. Usually you have a protein, vegetables, sauce, and a filler. That could be a steak, peas, gravy, and potatoes. Or a minced meat patty, onions/lettuce/tomatoes/pickles, ketchup, and a bun.
Ethan out here tear bombing himself with onions for weeks to bring us this, big props. Love the deep dive videos and I've been eagerly waiting for this one to drop!
Speaking of tears, he either didn't mention it or I missed it, but does one onion cause more discomfort than another when cutting them up? I've taken to running the onion under water after slicing it in half and it seems to cut down on tears/discomfort.
@reklessbravo2129, that makes sense since sweet onions are just onions grown in low sulphur soil. The lachrymatory agentsare sulphur compounds so an onion grown in low sulphur soil would have less of those compounds to "share".
Ethan i cant tell you how glad i am i found your channel! This is the thing I've wanted to know that would of made me want to cook much earlier in life. I just wanted the science laid out and basics covered. Can't thank you enough for your content
At this time where I live Allium canadense is growing in wild fields. Its grows cloves and flowers at the top of the edible stems. They have a unique garlicky but mostly onion taste, are easy to forage and are even popular in flower gardens.
Vidalia onions are grown in sandy soil that doesn't allow the onion to get enough sulfer to get the more pungent taste/smell making them seem sweeter. "Sweet" onions are just that same variety but not necessarily grown the same way.
That sounds awesome. Mind sharing the recipe? I’m thinking: ripe, chopped mango, chopped chilis in adobo sauce, shallots marinated in lime juice. How about cilantro? The mango isn’t puréed, is it? Anything else to keep in mind?
I was always curious about that movie Holes, and how the onioms were sweet enough to eat raw. Well I actually discovered they can be! If you pluck one right from the garden before it's had time to sit, it is actually very sweet and tasty! There's definitely an onion taste, but it doesn't burn at all and is not offputting.
My sister in-law in Florida loves raw Vidalia onion sandwiches with sour cream, particularly from the earliest harvest. I remember us searching for farmer’s markets whenever it was time for Vidalias to be harvested. Since raw onions have always been on the list of foods I never eat, I cannot appreciate crunching on an onion sandwich.
Nice! Funny bit is they dressed up apples to look like onions for the actors to actually eat. I think it's probably cause they couldn't convince the kids to eat raw onions straight for any payment.
As someone who buys yellow and white onions interchangeably based on what's cheaper at the time, I have never once noticed a difference in taste between the two. I had never even heard of anyone saying that you should only use white onions for Mexican food until TikTok came around.
Yes, white, yellow, and sweet are interchangeable as far as I'm concerned - whichever is the cheapest. I will only buy red onions or shallots if a different result is desired. Pretty much the conclusion of this video as I see it.
My wife/inlaws/compadres are straight from mexico - white onions and red/purple onions 95% of ths time. i think ive Seen yellow onions once but generally its strictly those two. White onions for the regular meat dishes, we use the purple and maybe some white (but always purple for sure) with the seafood dishes. Ceviche/Agua Chiles/etc.
I stumbled upon the 10 minute method by accident when I got too busy with other dishes, realized I was burning my onions, and threw some water on them to quickly deglaze. I was blown away at how well the deglaze redistributed the caramelized sugars, and now it's my go to method
love where you've taken the channel, man. it really gives me a lot to think about with my own cooking journey. like I was watching this and I was like damn I've never even sat down and smelled a bunch of different types of onions (or some other ingredient) next to each other--I feel like that is invaluable info. gonna do it
@@EthanChlebowski I was about to say that I wished a lot of your earlier videos had more experiments, and saw this was nearly an hour long. Wishes probably answered in advance, but I'll watch this in full when it's not 3am 🤣
I have a very analytical approach to cooking and always wondered about the logic and patterns behind the choice of each ingredient or method, and honestly your channel scratches that itch in the most perfect way possible + your recipes and takeaways are so modular it's easy to apply them to the ingredients I have on hand, it's just wonderful and so, so appreciated
I don't know if you caught this after publishing or if anyone else has pointed it out. But the graphics at 13:40 have Shallot at 90.1% water while you're saying 80% in the audio.
No hate, but 13:22 you have the shallot listed at 90.1% water, not 80.1%. I'm glad you said something, 'cause I was gonna miss that math mis-match otherwise
And apparently "caramelized" is very difficult to spell. I think he needs to have someone proof-read his text and charts, given that the rest of the content is solid 10/10 banger
The video is an outstanding detailed analysis of the Allium family. I got a lot out of this and have never seen anyone else, take this subject apart like you did. Bravo, you have matured and come a long way since you left the east coast.
8:39 _Allium_ species do even weirder things. Some will produce little bulblets where the flower usually grow. These are just tiny new plants, and they drop down and hopefully find root.
I've actually wondered all these things but it's just like going out of your way to find this information is not something you normally think of. Thank you for making a video of this.
An important quality of onions is their ability to retain liquid. Here in argentina for example we use them in meat empanadas to make a mix that is dry enough not to make the dough soggy when you cook them, but will be incredibly juicy when you bite into them. You have to put a lot of onions and cook them to the right point so their taste is not overwhelming.
I’ve avoided the whole onion family (onion, shallot, spring onion - not garlic though) my whole life, because there’s a particular flavour in onions that triggers a gag reflex for me, i just cannot eat it, not raw or cooked or caramelised. Literally makes me involuntarily retch. Recently though, i discovered that shallots don’t have this particular flavour! Completely changed my cooking, i always have shallots on hand now. Still not my absolute favourite, but i managed to enjoy my first “onion” (shallot) soup recently, so i’m happy.
I wish I could enjoy onion, since it's so prevalent, but I have a very low threshold between "I can't taste onion" and "I can't taste anything but onion and I might vomit." I've tried shallots, I've tried hing/asafoetida, but no luck. I love garlic. I will happily eat pretty much anything else, aside from humans, household pets, balut, insects, and dried coconut.
Similar for me - I hate white, yellow, and red onion, but shallots are fine, leeks are great, and I love garlic. I can tolerate green onion, but it's not my favorite. Onion flavorings are fine too - don't mind onion powder or things like Funyuns.
Great video, Ethan. I actually got quite surprised at the "Can I cook caramelized onions in 10 minutes?" question because I really didn't know that it took longer. And funnily enough, you cook it the opposite way. I add water first along with salt and sugar (you can also use honey instead), then let them sweat at quite high heat until the water evaporates. Then you add cooking oil and let the onions brown at medium/high heat, but the lower heat you go the more you avoid burning but you also extend the time required. I also agree to keep red onions and only buy yellow onions for caramelized onions. I bought shallots last week to use in a white wine moules frites and used the remainder of the packet as red onion substitutes in both burgers and a GREAT durum wrap. In my opinion, onions should taste like onions, and I probably load way more raw onions in my dishes than what is needed, but I would've packed 4x the amount of red onions in that sandwich! xD
The onions used in India aren't exactly red onions, they are actually more"lavender"onions! They are milder in flavour than red onions and soften up very well white sautéed, as in indian cooking! I find the red or white onions don't really come up to the same level in terms of flavour and texture but will both do the job when the Indian variety isn't available.
The red onions in India are much milder than elsewhere around the world. I used to live there and would love a tomato and onion sandwich, but in Australia, the red onions are far harsher.
Yes, there are huge regional differences in onions, even the time of year they are picked and how long they were allowed to grow, etc effects the flavour so so much.
As was mentioned in his aside with the distinction between sweet onions and yellow onions, the sulfur content of the soil is a major factor in how sweet any onion is
A day without onions on my plate and in my belly is not a day worth living. LOVE ONIONS and GARLIC!!! I can definitely taste the difference between all onions. They are such a beautiful thing!!!
LOVE this video on onions… you do an AMAZING job of comparing and answering questions that nearly ALL of us home cooks have (I assume). Thank you for your content! NEVER STOP! I learn SO MUCH from your vids!
When I was a kid 70 years ago I liked Italian style tuna sandwiches: drained can of tuna (unless the fancy kind packed in olive oil), half that weight in finely chopped onion, olive oil enough to bind, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, chopped parsley. Nowadays, I am likely to go a bit Persian, with sumac and aleppo pepper, maybe a good pinch of za'atar, in place of black pepper. Shallots would be wonderful here, as you suggest.
The shallots & pepper combo is the recipe for a lot of Indonesian food too. But most people use chilli peppers than paprika because it’s cheaper (& waaay hotter!)
Ethan please do a deep dive into how much oil is needed to actually cook. Like a spray vs a tablespoon. In my experience the taste doesn’t change as much
Unless the oil is heavily flavoured, it's more about speed and sticking, though to much oil can dilute flavours on your tongue. With a lot of oil, you can crank up the heat and stir less, with a film, you'll need to stir a lot, or add liquid.
@@TheArcSet Yes, but a lot of time traditional cooking never specifies the exact amount needed (a lot just eyeball it) and this ends up adding a ton of calories. for example, my friends always try to coat the entire pan with the oil straight by pouring it down from the bottle because they "feel" it prevents sticking and helps browning faster (as opposed to taking a small amount and spreading it manually with a tissue). A lot of food recipe channels on youtube do this mistake as well. This is obviously bad when the pan is bigger than a scrambled egg one lol. We are also then raised to believe that the less/no oil version is now "blander" & harder to cook and this makes it harder to switch to a healthy cooking style.
@@harsh3948 clearly you just don't cook much... How much oil you need is so broad he'd need to make a 24 hour video... Your oil issue is experience based. Start cooking and you'll figure it out.
Oh i think i disagree with your view. My parents dry fry everything or just use a little spray oil because they are often calorie conscious and i feel their food has terrible texture and lacking in flavour as a result
@@harsh3948 Oil doesn't speed up browning, just makes it more even. If you do a no oil version the heat transfer happens only on some small spots where it touches the pan, which will burn fast. On all other areas happens no maillard reaction so the majority of new flavour is missing. Also some compounds are only fat soluble, if you don't use anything that can change the taste significantly. Most foods are only able to soak up little, at that point it doesn't matter how much is left in the pan. I like to use rather more than necessary instead of too little. High quality oils are not unhealthy, they provide essential fatty acids. In addition the digestion and energy release is really slow. Anyway if calorie reduction is a concern I would look more into reducing processed foods with high sugar content. Especially simple sugars go extremely fast into the blood and it's possible to eat an insane amount without feeling full. I don't see a problem with oil/fat usage in home cooking.
Great video Ethan. I feel like your content has been constantly improving for a long time. It's on such a high level now, with excellent pacing, editing and of course the fascinating content.
One thing to consider is the color of your leftovers, because I made tuna noodle casserole with red onions once, cause it was what I had on hand. It was some nice color added to a very white meal on the first day. I barely like the meal on a good day, but when I got it out to reheat the leftovers the lovely red had turned a milky grayish blue. It was more than a little off putting.
It's the anthocyanin that makes the onion (and a lot of other food) red-purple. It changes color based on pH, like red cabbage. So it can turn bluish when in an alkaline environment and very red/pink in acid. This color change isn't usually noticeable in Indian food because the gravy is colored with turmeric and chilies.
I caramelize onions all the time because I also freeze sautéed onions and do 4 bags at a time in one day... ❤ I also use butter/margarine olive and Canola combo in stainless steel Dutch oven pot for a few minutes to have ready to freeze and cool down to bag... the ones I caramelize in 10-15 mins. I just do longer and in strips and have even frozen them as well, and ready to use ... I love eating as a condiment...
I think the main confusion you have with caramelized onions is that what you and the rest of the comments section is doing is not caramelizing onions, it's over sauteing. When really caramelizing there is no maillard. It takes a lot of heat control and several hours, it looks very similar but the brown flavor is absent. It becomes onion candy paste.
I'm going to assume here by brown flavor you mean lightly burned flavor since the sweetened caramel flavor is the flavor of proper browning😂 I get what you're saying though because I have noticed very very frequently and on this channel specifically also that people do tend to confuse slightly singed saute with caramelized. I do understand why the confusion though because I had no idea until I did it right the first time.
I love onions. Put them in everything. Grow them in my backyard garden (green onions, chives, red onion, and of course garlic). I have been known to go through a 50 pound bag in a month ❤
As a Romanian, we eat loads for raw onions, specifically red ones. Traditionally you would smash it with the palm of your hand and rip it apart rather than cut it (and then eat it raw with smoked meats, cheese, dips, bread, etc). I'm curious if this makes it milder. My grandpa also leaves pungent red onions for 30 mins outside in the winter - he mentioned when it freezes a bit it's more mild. 🤔
Cold does seem to help reduce onion heat. When I make sumac onions, I slice and salt the red onions and the cloudy onion water which comes out of the onions could be used for chemical warfare. A good bath in ice water after slicing also helps lower the heat.
It might be the specific variety of onion(s) traditionally grown in the region. Or even the soil as that affects sulfer concentration. How long the onions were dried and stored can also effect the flavor of onions.
13:10 Ethan, it is not correct to infer that since water is flavorless, the flavor of onions must therefore come from the carbs and proteins. These are the macro-fractions, but plants produce secondary metabolites that are responsible for a lot of their flavors. If you took any spice or herb, and evaluated it the way you evaluated onions, you would come to absolutely erroneous conclusions. The flavors of things cannot simply be attributed to one of their macroscopic fractions. Sometimes the tiniest traces of the flavorful plant secondary metabolites can make a world of difference. These secondary metabolites aren't carbs, and they aren't proteins either.
When I caramelize onions in the pan, I use white wine to stop the browning and prevent the burning, the white wine introduces some nice flavors and some sugar/sweetness. I wonder what you think about that.
I don't think pearl onions are a mature variety, they have to be either sets or early harvest. When you let onions get to that second growing season and get into full growth, I've noticed that they will almost always differentiate in the center. Like when you cut open a large yellow onion, there's a good chance of the outer layers being full circles, but the center will be two separate growing half circles. I love strong flavors, especially vinegar and onions, so I've always loved cocktail onions as a snack since I was a kid and ive eaten more of them than i can count. And I have never once encountered a cocktail onion, which is a pearl onion, that had those two half circles in the center. It was always just the early growth of full circles all the way down to the very center
I've literally added sugar to caramelise onions for my whole life. It reduces the time immensely and it gives amazing flavour depending on the sugar source. Its a completely different thing to add normal sugar, demarara sugar, honey or jam.
To help with watering eyes while cutting onions have a damp paper towel beside your cutting board and cover the the freshly chopped onions with it. As mentioned, the sulfur compounds that cause you to cry are attracted to water so give them something closer then your eyes to bond to.
I've been using that method for quick caramelised onions for a long time. Adding a touch of sugar really amps them up. I prefer doing it for a longer time but sometimes you need them in a rush.
Pearl onions, along with Cipollini and Baby onions, represent small onion varieties specifically cultivated for their size through certain agricultural practices. They are typically grown from sets, which are immature onion bulbs. These sets are planted and harvested within a single growing season, usually before they can grow into full-sized onions. The cultivation process involves planting the onion sets closely together in dense patterns. This method of planting restricts the space each onion has to expand, thereby limiting the size of the bulb that each plant can produce. This agricultural technique is key to ensuring the onions do not grow beyond a desired small size. Additionally, the timing of the planting and harvesting is crucial. These onion varieties are often harvested earlier than traditional onions, which also contributes to their smaller size. For instance, while a typical onion might be left in the ground to mature fully, these small varieties are pulled much sooner to maintain their petite scale. This type of cultivation is used not only to achieve specific sizes but also to manage the yield of crops more effectively. By controlling the size and harvest time, farmers can produce these onions more quickly and efficiently, fitting multiple growing cycles into a single growing season if conditions allow. This makes Pearl, Cipollini, and Baby onions popular choices for growers aiming for fast crop rotation and efficient use of space.
Yeah, in the actual list with names the first one Sweet, is in a golden orange-yellow, whereas number 1 under the bowl is a blue-violet color. This mistake is even more confusing because in the list of names there are two very similar golden colors used, and in the sequence of numbers there are two very similar violet colors used.
One point for me is how big the onion is. Here in Europe most of them are medium size. Where I live, red onions are quite small so I pay the same price/kg but have more skin to peel/ throw away Surface m² to Volume m³ ratio. So I only buy them, when friends come along and the visuals are a factor.
And it's not just peel to "flesh" ratio, but also how much onion you get at once. When you only need a bit, why cut open a huge onion and let the rest dry out. Oh, and red onions also tend to be milder over here.
love this! only thing i'd add is a green onion option. i love chives & scallions, especially as a supporting character, that lifts all the flavors up together; &again, amazing video!
1:16 that's now how percentages work, Ethan. 3.5 _per cent_ over 0.62 would be 0.64g sugar. It's not 3.5x either since that would only work if the Russet had 1.2g of sugar (1.2*3.5=~4.18). It has 3.5g more sugar, or 6.85x the total amount of Russets, or 573% _more_ than Russets.
Biting into an onion like an apple has always been one of those intrusive thoughts whenever I chop an onion. I love onions raw but have never just bitten into one.
My middle child went through a phase shortly after she began crawling, of having an intense love for raw onions. We stored ours within her easy reach, and almost every morning, while we were getting everyone ready to leave for work and school, she would grab one to munch on like an apple. We never tried to stop her as she clearly loved them, and it wasn't dangerous as long as we were watching her in case she took a bite large enough to choke on. Fortunately, we made a point of removing the outer skins before putting them away and she had neither the bite force nor teeth required to do anything beyond poking a couple little holes and sucking out that tasty onion juice she so adored. We did get a little bit tired of apologizing to the sitter for her onion breath, though. The day she managed to get more than she was used to was the last time she went for that particular morning snack.
you should try it, it can be very delicious depending on how its prepared - maybe next time you buy onions; keep one in the fridge for a while (removing the outer layers) then just munch on it - its not an uncommon snack, ive seen many eat onions like that (and tomatoes) so yeah, go for it
@RecliningWhale, I have chopped my share of onions but have to say that biting into an onion like an apple is a thought which has never occurred to me even once. I love onions - raw or cooked - but I have never felt the urge to bite into one!
In regards to you small onion question, the answer is yes to all three... depending on the variety, some just only get that big, some are just bigger onions picked earlier, some are planted from seed and picked in the first year, others are second year bulbs.
I would like to note that most small ( pearl ) onion varieties are just large onion varieties that are picked early. They tend to have a more mild and sweet flavor.
Let me know what onion tests you want to do at home!
Thank you again to Made In for sponsoring this video, check out the cookware I use here ➡️ madein.cc/0424-ethan
Video Notes & Corrections:
1. 13:30 - Shallot water content should be 79.8%
Wrong color legend at 33:00
If you put "Correction: 13:30 the explanation text” in the description, it will pop up on the video - just fyi!
@@KhanStopMeDang, I had no idea that was a thing! Thanks for the tip!
Oven onion caramelization is superb !
10 minutes stove top caramelization is insufficient.
12:51 Water not What
Pearl onions are harvested after ninety days of growth and don't reach full maturity. Its the same with cipollini onions but pearl onions are either white or red onions while cipollini onions are typically sweet onions. They all are unique cultivars of their respective onions but the main purpose of these onions are to be grown quickly and then stored or preserved. Pickled pearl onions are great.
Interesting! Thanks for answering the question! ❤
went directly into the comments for this info, thanks man!
That's a really silly statistical question, because you can taste PLENTY of difference in any given onion. The types could still narrow it down where and when you get that seasonal onion they cultivated, not just factory-farm them for a color and a bland taste. You can't just pick a cultivar for a GUARANTEED reliability unless you already guarantee that the "normal' one is absolute lowest common denominator.
If breeds of onions DO end up having some great regular difference, it's because they manufactured them that way and picked which genus they want to market which way. Food flavors should be encounterd as cultural expereinces, like woodstock going better or worse. Current culture is fixated on RECORDINGS like hearing the Jimi Hendrix star-spangled banner. You don't sing songs to each other but pay ad money on what gets to be on your mixtape.
@@sboinkthelegday3892 Who are you replying to?
The one thing you didn’t answer is if they are 90 days of growth in the second season or the first? So are they grown for one season and then put in the ground as a set and grown for 90 days or are they planted from seed and grown for 90 days?
Ethan, please do a butter deep dive. In Belgian cuisine everything is baked with butter rather than (olive) oil. We use a LOT of butter so I really want to know if it's worth buying more expensive brands or not
Our plan is to do the butter deep dive this fall!
Wow how much planning in advance that butter will be compared in fall wow
I use cheap butter for most baked things or frying, and expensive stuff for using cold (mostly with bread as a side), where the butter flavor is central to the dish(french toast, enriching a sauce), or fancy baked goods. I try to keep 10 lbs of butter in the freezer of various kinds at all times, I've pretty much done the butter episode on my own by virtue of loving my butter! Land-o-Lakes and Challenge are my go-to brands for good butter. I'm not a fan of Irish butter, but that's personal preference on the funky flavor of it.
Danish Creamery is my fav, I know everybody loves Kerrygold but DC has a much creamier consistency which I love
Make your own french butter recipe. Very tasty !
The thing is. In Mexico we use white onions because that is the only onion we can buy, or is the cgeapest one. But I have never seen anyone complain or say its not mexican if it doesn't have white onion. Only Americans complain about such a thing.
I prefer to cook with white onions. I think they have a sharper flavor than yellow.
Yes. We buy whatever is cheapest. Except when we will pickle them. Red Onion is the one we use but will use others when not available.😅
In Europe it's the other way around: yellow onion is used for most thing because they are cheaper and more common.
@@vde1846 Same deal in Canada
ahh Americans complaining. Who would guess - when they never cook at home, such experts in cuisine.
It's insane to think about how much effort and meticulous plan there would have been behind this video. I can't believe I watched it all throughout without getting bored. Honestly, not a single minute is a waste when watching such a top notch work. Being a chemistry student, it made me ponder upon and ask many questions in my head on these complexes of cooking. I learned a lot... and will definitely be going through other videos in this series.
Dude me too😂
But i am a cooking appreantice
I don't even like onions, but I can't stop watching! I am learning so much. It will help me cook better for others! BTW I have a chemistry minor. It's a tough degree. Good on you, and good luck! 😃
- Yeah, I used it to fall asleep. Then woke back up && went back to the parts I missed bc I didn't *want* to miss anything.
Can't believe I watched a 48 minutes of onions but still found it informational and entertaining, well done!
In NZ we don't even have half the onions he's testing. We only have onions, red onions, or shallots.
Ikr? We must be ogres or something
Well donion!
This is what I was wondering at the end of video😂
Gardener here who has grown a lot of onions. To answer question Pearl Onions, Cipollinis, and Baby Onions are different things. Pearl onions are, almost always, a different species from your regular onion. Sometimes baby onions are labeled pearl onions but this is not true. Pearl Onions have the scientific classification name Allium Ampeloprasum and a "regular onion" have the name Allium Cepa. Pearl onions do not grow much bigger if grown into the second season. They at least do not grow to the size of a regular onion. Cipollinis are a specific variety of onion. Baby Onions are just normal onions. All three onions are harvested right after the first season so the right answer is A.
I never realized that I was supposed to let them grow at least 2 years - but it explains why my alliums were always so disappointing!
Not something that really matters, but I have a specific brain tick that forces me to point this out even though I know it's annoying, but with scientific names, you don't capitalize the species name. You're also supposed to always italicize them, so most properly it would be _Allium ampeloprasum_ but frankly who cares about the italicization.
Also for shortening the genus, you take just the first letter and out a period behind it, so _A. cepa._ this is why it's technically most properly written as _T. rex,_ not T-Rex, for example.
@@paulbrickler You're not supposed to grow them for 2 years, if you do that they'll flower and be ruined. Whether growing from sets or seeds you need to harvest in the first year, seeds just need to be started earlier in the year to give them time to grow before bulbing.
I'm able to get massive bulbs in the first year, but I start the seeds indoors in January and live in a northern latitude so we get really long days in the summer which may help.
@@TheSkillotron At 4:50 he says the tops die and the bulb can be left underground or cultivated and replanted the next season. I'm not sure what to believe now.
A nearly hour long video all about onions. This is the kind of hyper focused content I love on UA-cam. 😊
I love how much I learn on this channel about ingredients....helps me "throw things together"
@@MizJaniceResinArtEthan's channel made me skyrocket my cooking skills. I'm still novice objectively but a much more wisened and experienced novice. But my family thinks of me as some pro chef and keep telling me to open a restaurant. Screw that, I'm never working food service again, especially if I'm the one running the business. That industry is horrific. Hellish even.
It's actually over a TV hour, bc TV shows give you about 42 minutes of content per hour.
(And some of that is repeating the last minute of content from before the commercial.)
As in, you're righter than the critique who'll eventually show up even realizes if they never watched that retired invention, TV.
I hate onions, but I'm enjoying the heck out of this. 😆
Ethan, a bit of a hack from a person in the coffee industry, we always use carbonated water to clean the palette, works like a charm.
Thanks!
As a Libyan I can confirm we eat a hell of a lot of onions. Basically 90% of Libyan dishes (at least the ones I cook) starts with onions garlic and tomato. We even have a dish called "onion" in Arabic or 'Busla'. It's like a tomatoey, onion-based sauce you can put on rice or pasta and it's DELICIOUS.
Basically everything is a variation of the same onion sauce with maybe different spices lol. Anything you can think of (beans, fish, okra, meat, other veggies, etc.) is cooked in an onion and tomato-based sauce.
welcome to libya my friend!
Man I'd probably die of starvation in Libya, biting into any onion other than shallots makes me want to hurl. Love the flavor, it's just the juicy crunch in the middle of a completely different texture I can't handle. Shallots cook up soft enough that it's not a problem with those.
Onion base is so great in stews. As a Swede I use it for most of my cooking because it's so easy to get right :)
Tomatoes give me heartburn.
@@missingaria2503 yeah my mom and ex and most women seem to not like onions lol, than again I seen a video women taste buds are more sensitive and can taste more than a man's tongue.
As an Indian who recently moved to America, I have found that shallots are much closer in flavor to the red onions that we get in India than the red onions that you get here.
That's really useful to know for cooking purpose...
Shallots are much more expensive here than other onion, besides pearl. Last time I bought one it was almost $3 for one tiny shallot.
@@hollybug-76542where the hell are you getting shallots for 3 dollars apiece 😂😂💀
Interesting! I have been using shallots in Indian recipes ever since it was all I had in the house once, and really liked the results. Thanks for confirming I wasn’t crazy haha
welcome to america my friend!
This is the type of stuff that makes this channel so interesting, refreshing, and useful. Applaud the effort and comprehensiveness that went into this. You're a rockstar, seriously.
Was not expecting to be suddenly swept away in an hour long deep dive of onions 10/10
Me, ignorant, before this video started- "I'm gonna learn so much, I love this!"
Me at the end of the video- *"Bro, what is going on in Libya?"*
yeah, I assumed India would be #1 but holy hell, Libya, leave some for the rest of us...
That's... a complicated question.
Lmao
See ya, wouldnt want to Libya!
I came here for this? What do they eat all the onions in?
In late 90s early 2000s I found Alton Brown. His butter episode just on the specific properties of butter really impressed me. That one 22 min of info explained how butter works and then I could extrapolate it into all the dishes I ever cooked in the future. Ethan here is doing the same, he is not making a recipe but letting us use our knowledge as how to use an onion under all situation not just that 1 recipe How, what, where. why and when of onions
Alton Brown was great! He dispelled so many old wives tales of cooking.
Good Eats was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good
Alton Brown was actually the person who got me interested in cooking by explaining it scientifically.
@@spikefivefivefive Absolutely I feel if you watched Good Eats from Start to end you would have a Masters in Culinary Arts
@@labla8940 - The "Good Eats Reloaded" editions he did on Cooking Channel were even better as he corrected errors and misinformation from the original series. I never saw "Good Eats: The Return" episodes as our cable company didn't carry Food Network. However, I could not take the pandemic home version, "Quarantine Quitchen". He fell off the rails, in my opinion, though I loved the chemistry lab countertops he had in Georgia.
I’m an Iowa State Master gardener. I grow onions from seed, not sets (just a personal choice), and they’re harvested that year. Onions only need a full biennial cycle to produce seeds, but 2 years are not necessary to produce the onions we eat.
Also, there’s a HUGE world of onions you can grow yourself beyond what we can buy in a store. 🙂
What's your favorite onion ɓro?
Aussie here, yea, me and my family grow a patch of about 20 onions in the back yard each year at home from seeds, its like a 7 or 8 month grow. They only last us about 2 weeks 😂😂😂 but it's fun to grow your own every now and then
@@krishdeliciousful If I’m buying, the average white onion usually.
If I’m planting, a variety often called Utah Storage Onion or Utah Spanish Onion. It’s a yellow onion, so not great in raw applications, but it really lives up to its name.
Properly cured and stored hanging in knotted nylons, I’ve had them regularly last for 4 to 5 months in a dry, cool, dark basement. 🙂
I grow from my saved seed a heritage sweet onion, Ailsa Craig, gets huge and so mild you can eat it raw. It stores until march usually. I love it fried in lard until carmalized as a side. My favorite veg.😊
Please share with us. We love your knowledge. I would love to try
This was actually super fascinating to me! I had received shallot in a Hello Fresh box once, and my reaction was genuinely, "shallot!? What is this? Fancy pants onions??" I used them because I was curious, and after eating them, it got me wondering if they had actually contributed to the dish differently from a regular yellow onion (the dish was totally delicious). That was maybe 5 years ago. Seeing this, I can now see why the shallot was included. They actually do make a difference! It also confirmed to me why certain soups I make are far more delicious with a sweet onion as opposed to a white onion or even a yellow onion. The sweet onion offers a more mild flavor that's subdued, whereas a white onion can almost overwhelm the soup. Very, very cool. Thanks!!!
I want to see you do this with the different types of potatoes, Mister. We all eat them and it may take more than one video for them but I believe it's needed. They are as humble as the onion and yet used pretty constantly, especially as a budget friendly food that packs a mix of nutrients and comfort.
Would love to see a deep dive into Hansa, Nicola, Gala, Agria, Gunda, Linda, La Ratte, Bintje, Sieglinde, Marabel, etc
Since we always get the name on the bag in Germany I have started to really not which potatoes is best for what.
I love fried potatoes and it really makes a difference.
"We all eat them" - who's we? Onion is much more universally eaten as a food than potato.
@@Chris-N916 Well, sir, here's your video then. I didn't expect this to be such a controversial take that someone on a food video would find fault in the word potato. Excuse me while I beg forgiveness of the masses before I am stoned to death.
GIVE ME THE PHD!!
Seriously though, I absolutely love these deep dives. There are so many "opinion" videos from very good chefs, but very few actual objective videos. Thanks so much for all the hard work, it is much appreciated!
You put 90.1% instead of 80 for the shallot at 13:27
also "what" instead of "water" in the description shortly before
there's a lot of those. bro was tired making this video
I added it as a correction note in my pinned comment! When the video gets this long there's always at least one or two items that slip through!
Also colors not matching the identifier in one of the taste tests
This section is odd for another reason - animo acids (proteins) and carbs don't all taste the same, even with aroma removed from the equation. The macro balance chart is both too much and not enough information. Onions and apples are both mostly water with some carbs and almost no protein, sure, but that's true of all fruits and vegetables and they don't all taste similarly. Onions and apples "taste" similar with your nose plugged because they have a similar watery and crunchy texture on top of similar levels of simple and complex carbs. As you discuss later in the video, our experience of food is multi-sensory so texture factors into what we colloquially call "taste". Cotton candy is 100% pure sugar with flavorless food coloring, but the airy texture makes the taste experience different from a spoonful of table sugar.
I love the deep dives!
I literally just watched a video where someone said "use what you have on hand, it doesn't matter" and immediately thought to myself "Hm, wonder if Ethan has a video about this one". Lo and behold, you do! As always, mad respect to how thoroughly you explain and test everything, always love your videos!
That was probably "That Dude Can Cook"?
@@DIEKALSTER8 I wanna think it was "Food With Chetna" actually? Could've been anyone though, I feel like I most often hear people say to just use what you have on hand rather than insisting it has to be one or another type of onion
That's how I tend to cook. I use what I have around.
"I literally just watched a video".
Rubbish... You visually watched the video.
Please do a playlist for these deep dive videos. They are so interesting and i don't want to miss any of them
I kind of enjoy the irony that these plants developed sulfur compounds to deter them from being eaten so that they can survive - and then humans came around and thought they tasted delicious and decided to propagate them. They became evolutionarily successful by doing the exact opposite of what they intended.
There was no intention...
Same with peppers
@MCden603 and tobacco! Probably a bunch of other stuff as well. Can't think of any right now, though...
@@SearchingOblivion cannabis.
@@ericcartmann 100
the way i grew up is that white onion was for stews, soups, long cooking. yellow onion for sauteing. sweet onion for caramelization. red onion will be left raw. and shallot is another sauteing onion but its mainly for rich and/or creamy meals
Should be called "Ethan's Cooking Lab" channel. Man you are thorough as heck. Good jon Ethan. You go above and beyond in your experiments and I appreciate that.
Edit: *job
Sees a onion deep dive video:
It's about 48 minutes long.
Seems like an appropriate length for the topic
The longer the deep dive the more the nerd in me gets hyped
I use onions every day. This video is a god send lol
It was about 28 mins for me plus a 30 second skip on the ad about pans.... Speed watch at 1.7x. Most YT videos can be sped watched and you wont miss anything.
tbh 48 mins isn't long enough
@@kameljoe21 we are witnessing a masterclass in onion knowledge assimilation
Chipolini are a specific Italian cultivar of Onion, they are also not really small, I've grown them and other then being flat they can grow the same size as regular yellow onions.
Spring onions are indeed imature 2nd year onions, generally the result from thinning a row of planted onions so that the remainder have room to bulb properly.
Vidalia Onions are not JUST from Georgia, they need to come from a specific set of COUNTIES of Georgia, centered on the country of Vidalia itself. It is soil conditions which are said to produce extra mild onions, likely due to lower sulfur content.
Yep, a "sweet onion" =/= Vidalia. Gotta get real Vidalia. It matters.
We ALWAYS keep two jars (red wine & white wine vinegar) of pickled red onions in the fridge.
Recently we added a mixture shallots to the onions.
Not sure if it really tastes different but they go with everything!
be honest, how much did you cry during the making of this video?
I cried tears of joy
I was crying editing all of this (I'm not the editor)
Contact lenses make you immune to onion fumes
@breal9435 bro no way fr?
@@ViCT0RiA6 yep they block it.
Most onions are grown from seed these days and harvested after one growing season. Also the pungent flavor can be found in all colors and are selected out depending on market expectation for a specific appearance.
(source: I work as an assistant for a small onion breeder )
grew up with yellow onions maybe cause they were the most available. as a kid i hated now i love them. funny i ate onion ring(Snack) so dried form totally different!
I was wondering about that. Thanks for your comment.
I was looking for this comment. Grew up near Walla Walla. I wonder if the way they grow those is part of why their shelf life is so short. They're started at the end of one growing season, overwintered, and then harvested at the end of that growing season. So technically, 2nd year.
Gardening, I was taught that doing that or planting sets, would give them the chance/signal to flower, which is what makes shelf life short.
I've seen people suggest adding a splash of water to caramelized onions as they cook whenever the pan gets too dry, but after I tried that a few times, a came up with a tweak that I like better: using a splash of beer instead! They get very dark, sweet, and flavorful, and since it's just little splashes over high heat over a long cook time, the alcohol has plenty of time to cook off.
The beer might be like adding a bit of sugar?
Doesn’t work for me…I drink all the beer before it goes into the pan. 😊
thats a great idea! will be doing that in the future to get rid of the 2 cases low alcohol beer that my flatmate bought but doesnt like sjsjsjsj
Throwing random liquids that you happen to have on hand into cooking food is a fun activity everyone should engage in every once in a while.
I use balsamic vinegar
This was a deep dive video that was fun to watch. Thx for the attention to detail you put in to it, appreciated!!!
One thing to note about onions is that while home gardeners often use sets to grow onions, farms go from seed to full bulb in one season. This takes longer but produces bigger onions without the risk of them becoming woody (onions flower in the second year, so sometimes a set will produce flowers, and if this occurs, the onion becomes woody.) So likely for those smaller onion cultivars you talked about they are either planted at greater density and/or harvested earlier, but certainly within one season as it is only really home gardeners who grow onions over two seasons.
For most Malaysian kitchens, we always have a supply of shallots, red onions, and yellow onions. For some dishes, we use all three e.g. using all three in sambal ikan bilis gives the sauce a robust flavor profile. I always just did what my MIL taught me to do but now I kindof understand why.
I like this idea of layering your onion varieties for more flavour complexity~ Imma try it!
A note about the other onions:
If you want onion greens, do chives.
If you want both fresh onion greens and cooked onion bulb, do scallions.
If you want big stewed chunks of onion for a soup or stew, that's where leeks come into play.
Also, I share your passion for shallots. It's nice to get a little bit of garlicky flavor without having to deal with peeling and slicing/mincing garlic. Also, as a single man who lives alone, it's nice to be able to grab a single bulb of shallot for a single dish, instead of having to chop up 1/3-1/2 of a normal sized onion and put the rest in a ziploc for the next day.
If only shallots weren't twice the price of a white onion.
We use a garlic squisher ... ok, properly a garlic _press,_ but we use it to *squish* the garlic ... instead of mincing. You get the same result, but it's a lot faster.
Leeks have a completely different flavor from onions. They are not fungible.
@@TheFriskyJacketI'm growing shallots this year 💯 due to the cost in the store.
I love leeks, I always eat it with a white, or cheese sauce 😋
Shallots were something we never ate as a child, they were really expensive, and hence never buy them as an adult.
I think I should give them a try!!
Thank you this video is absolutely amazing and I love how well put together the video is all around and you go the extra mile to answer as many questions as possible and put in a crazy amount of effort in to your work your good at what you do and you got a new sub thank you
I have finally realized after over 60 years of life that thinly sliced sweet onions mixed with thinly shredded lettuce is an important burger topping!
Indeed. A burger, like most dishes, needs the right mix of ingredients.
Usually you have a protein, vegetables, sauce, and a filler.
That could be a steak, peas, gravy, and potatoes.
Or a minced meat patty, onions/lettuce/tomatoes/pickles, ketchup, and a bun.
Ethan out here tear bombing himself with onions for weeks to bring us this, big props.
Love the deep dive videos and I've been eagerly waiting for this one to drop!
Speaking of tears, he either didn't mention it or I missed it, but does one onion cause more discomfort than another when cutting them up? I've taken to running the onion under water after slicing it in half and it seems to cut down on tears/discomfort.
@@mikepatton8691sweet onions are less uncomfortable than other varieties
@reklessbravo2129, that makes sense since sweet onions are just onions grown in low sulphur soil. The lachrymatory agentsare sulphur compounds so an onion grown in low sulphur soil would have less of those compounds to "share".
Oh yeah, I have a MSc in Onionology from the University of Chlebowski
Ethan i cant tell you how glad i am i found your channel! This is the thing I've wanted to know that would of made me want to cook much earlier in life. I just wanted the science laid out and basics covered. Can't thank you enough for your content
Cippolini are indeed "first year" onions grown from seed. What you buy in the store (if fresh) are basically sets.
At this time where I live Allium canadense is growing in wild fields. Its grows cloves and flowers at the top of the edible stems. They have a unique garlicky but mostly onion taste, are easy to forage and are even popular in flower gardens.
You’re among the very best educators on UA-cam, Ethan. Thanks for all your hard work.
Vidalia onions are grown in sandy soil that doesn't allow the onion to get enough sulfer to get the more pungent taste/smell making them seem sweeter. "Sweet" onions are just that same variety but not necessarily grown the same way.
We make pork tacos with a mango salsa that includes chilis in adobo sauce, lime juice, and shallots. Now I know why they're so amazing: shallots.
That sounds awesome. Mind sharing the recipe? I’m thinking: ripe, chopped mango, chopped chilis in adobo sauce, shallots marinated in lime juice. How about cilantro? The mango isn’t puréed, is it? Anything else to keep in mind?
We need your recipe!
I was always curious about that movie Holes, and how the onioms were sweet enough to eat raw.
Well I actually discovered they can be! If you pluck one right from the garden before it's had time to sit, it is actually very sweet and tasty! There's definitely an onion taste, but it doesn't burn at all and is not offputting.
My sister in-law in Florida loves raw Vidalia onion sandwiches with sour cream, particularly from the earliest harvest. I remember us searching for farmer’s markets whenever it was time for Vidalias to be harvested. Since raw onions have always been on the list of foods I never eat, I cannot appreciate crunching on an onion sandwich.
My mom used to buy Vidalias to eat raw like that, but I've never tried that sandwich! It sounds good.
@@maryellerd4187 You won't eat them because they appear on your list?
Ever try erasing part of that list? :D
Nice! Funny bit is they dressed up apples to look like onions for the actors to actually eat.
I think it's probably cause they couldn't convince the kids to eat raw onions straight for any payment.
My grandpa used to eat raw onions like apples from time to time from his garden
As someone who buys yellow and white onions interchangeably based on what's cheaper at the time, I have never once noticed a difference in taste between the two. I had never even heard of anyone saying that you should only use white onions for Mexican food until TikTok came around.
Same. Didn't even know some people considered them to be any different or even using different terms for them.
Place I worked at used red onion for Mexican food so go figure.
Yes, white, yellow, and sweet are interchangeable as far as I'm concerned - whichever is the cheapest. I will only buy red onions or shallots if a different result is desired. Pretty much the conclusion of this video as I see it.
My wife/inlaws/compadres are straight from mexico - white onions and red/purple onions 95% of ths time. i think ive Seen yellow onions once but generally its strictly those two. White onions for the regular meat dishes, we use the purple and maybe some white (but always purple for sure) with the seafood dishes. Ceviche/Agua Chiles/etc.
I stumbled upon the 10 minute method by accident when I got too busy with other dishes, realized I was burning my onions, and threw some water on them to quickly deglaze. I was blown away at how well the deglaze redistributed the caramelized sugars, and now it's my go to method
love where you've taken the channel, man. it really gives me a lot to think about with my own cooking journey. like I was watching this and I was like damn I've never even sat down and smelled a bunch of different types of onions (or some other ingredient) next to each other--I feel like that is invaluable info. gonna do it
The onion deep dive video I've been wanting to see has finally happened!
I agree and remember requesting it.
Hopefully we did it justice, there are so many different angles to consider when using onions!
Music by day onions by night. KA$TRO you’re everywhere
@@EthanChlebowski I was about to say that I wished a lot of your earlier videos had more experiments, and saw this was nearly an hour long. Wishes probably answered in advance, but I'll watch this in full when it's not 3am 🤣
@@theunidentified8672 HAHA legit laughing hard right now. Y'all know I don't play around when it comes to cooking too! 🙏
I have a very analytical approach to cooking and always wondered about the logic and patterns behind the choice of each ingredient or method, and honestly your channel scratches that itch in the most perfect way possible
+ your recipes and takeaways are so modular it's easy to apply them to the ingredients I have on hand, it's just wonderful and so, so appreciated
I don't know if you caught this after publishing or if anyone else has pointed it out. But the graphics at 13:40 have Shallot at 90.1% water while you're saying 80% in the audio.
Just noticed that and jumped to the comments lol. He has a pinned post explaining
lol no way I thought I would be the only one who would comment about it
No hate, but 13:22 you have the shallot listed at 90.1% water, not 80.1%. I'm glad you said something, 'cause I was gonna miss that math mis-match otherwise
Also at 36:26 he flipped the labels of shallot and sweet onion under the clips
And apparently "caramelized" is very difficult to spell. I think he needs to have someone proof-read his text and charts, given that the rest of the content is solid 10/10 banger
The video is an outstanding detailed analysis of the Allium family.
I got a lot out of this and have never seen anyone else, take this subject apart like you did.
Bravo, you have matured and come a long way since you left the east coast.
8:39 _Allium_ species do even weirder things. Some will produce little bulblets where the flower usually grow. These are just tiny new plants, and they drop down and hopefully find root.
0:04 i'm not crying.
I've actually wondered all these things but it's just like going out of your way to find this information is not something you normally think of. Thank you for making a video of this.
An important quality of onions is their ability to retain liquid. Here in argentina for example we use them in meat empanadas to make a mix that is dry enough not to make the dough soggy when you cook them, but will be incredibly juicy when you bite into them. You have to put a lot of onions and cook them to the right point so their taste is not overwhelming.
I’ve avoided the whole onion family (onion, shallot, spring onion - not garlic though) my whole life, because there’s a particular flavour in onions that triggers a gag reflex for me, i just cannot eat it, not raw or cooked or caramelised. Literally makes me involuntarily retch. Recently though, i discovered that shallots don’t have this particular flavour! Completely changed my cooking, i always have shallots on hand now. Still not my absolute favourite, but i managed to enjoy my first “onion” (shallot) soup recently, so i’m happy.
I wish I could enjoy onion, since it's so prevalent, but I have a very low threshold between "I can't taste onion" and "I can't taste anything but onion and I might vomit." I've tried shallots, I've tried hing/asafoetida, but no luck. I love garlic. I will happily eat pretty much anything else, aside from humans, household pets, balut, insects, and dried coconut.
Similar for me - I hate white, yellow, and red onion, but shallots are fine, leeks are great, and I love garlic. I can tolerate green onion, but it's not my favorite. Onion flavorings are fine too - don't mind onion powder or things like Funyuns.
Dang that sucks.
You do a little gagging how does that make you feel ? 😂
hey that might be your body trying to prevent you from digesting something youre allergic to. you might have an onion allergy. just a heads up
Great video, Ethan. I actually got quite surprised at the "Can I cook caramelized onions in 10 minutes?" question because I really didn't know that it took longer. And funnily enough, you cook it the opposite way. I add water first along with salt and sugar (you can also use honey instead), then let them sweat at quite high heat until the water evaporates. Then you add cooking oil and let the onions brown at medium/high heat, but the lower heat you go the more you avoid burning but you also extend the time required.
I also agree to keep red onions and only buy yellow onions for caramelized onions. I bought shallots last week to use in a white wine moules frites and used the remainder of the packet as red onion substitutes in both burgers and a GREAT durum wrap. In my opinion, onions should taste like onions, and I probably load way more raw onions in my dishes than what is needed, but I would've packed 4x the amount of red onions in that sandwich! xD
Really love this deep dive data heavy stuff. It's obvious to me that you put alot of time and effort into your content. Keep up the good work man!
The onions used in India aren't exactly red onions, they are actually more"lavender"onions! They are milder in flavour than red onions and soften up very well white sautéed, as in indian cooking! I find the red or white onions don't really come up to the same level in terms of flavour and texture but will both do the job when the Indian variety isn't available.
Didn't realize macro shots of chopping unions was so mesmerizing
What separates home cooks from pro chefs?
Table salt * oils * onions ❌
Sea salt * real butter * shallots ✅
The red onions in India are much milder than elsewhere around the world. I used to live there and would love a tomato and onion sandwich, but in Australia, the red onions are far harsher.
Yes, there are huge regional differences in onions, even the time of year they are picked and how long they were allowed to grow, etc effects the flavour so so much.
For me it’s the mangoes and bananas
@@splashpit I miss Indian mangoes. Especially with salt and chilli powder!
As was mentioned in his aside with the distinction between sweet onions and yellow onions, the sulfur content of the soil is a major factor in how sweet any onion is
Well this explains why my indian cookbook recommends tomato and onion salad. I just thought Indian palates were v. different to mine.
A day without onions on my plate and in my belly is not a day worth living. LOVE ONIONS and GARLIC!!! I can definitely taste the difference between all onions. They are such a beautiful thing!!!
LOVE this video on onions… you do an AMAZING job of comparing and answering questions that nearly ALL of us home cooks have (I assume). Thank you for your content! NEVER STOP! I learn SO MUCH from your vids!
Thank you Ethan, for taking the time, efforts and patience in making an in depth onion video. This was a joy to watch 👌
Got the notification for this and sprang for my laptop lol Love these deep dives
SAME! I drop pretty much any other video for Ethan
Yeah, these are so useful and educational. Even when the difference is negligible, it allows me to be _mindful_ of my cooking techniques
Im not crying, you're crying.... cause this channel is so good!
Minced shallots, smoked paprika, mix em into your tuna with the other usual afair. Best onion for tuna sandwich.
When I was a kid 70 years ago I liked Italian style tuna sandwiches: drained can of tuna (unless the fancy kind packed in olive oil), half that weight in finely chopped onion, olive oil enough to bind, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, chopped parsley. Nowadays, I am likely to go a bit Persian, with sumac and aleppo pepper, maybe a good pinch of za'atar, in place of black pepper. Shallots would be wonderful here, as you suggest.
The shallots & pepper combo is the recipe for a lot of Indonesian food too. But most people use chilli peppers than paprika because it’s cheaper (& waaay hotter!)
Per the label, one big red or yellow or white onion contains 10 gms of sugar, whereas one shallot has 1 gm of sugar.
Ethan please do a deep dive into how much oil is needed to actually cook. Like a spray vs a tablespoon. In my experience the taste doesn’t change as much
Unless the oil is heavily flavoured, it's more about speed and sticking, though to much oil can dilute flavours on your tongue.
With a lot of oil, you can crank up the heat and stir less, with a film, you'll need to stir a lot, or add liquid.
@@TheArcSet Yes, but a lot of time traditional cooking never specifies the exact amount needed (a lot just eyeball it) and this ends up adding a ton of calories.
for example, my friends always try to coat the entire pan with the oil straight by pouring it down from the bottle because they "feel" it prevents sticking and helps browning faster (as opposed to taking a small amount and spreading it manually with a tissue). A lot of food recipe channels on youtube do this mistake as well. This is obviously bad when the pan is bigger than a scrambled egg one lol.
We are also then raised to believe that the less/no oil version is now "blander" & harder to cook and this makes it harder to switch to a healthy cooking style.
@@harsh3948 clearly you just don't cook much... How much oil you need is so broad he'd need to make a 24 hour video... Your oil issue is experience based. Start cooking and you'll figure it out.
Oh i think i disagree with your view. My parents dry fry everything or just use a little spray oil because they are often calorie conscious and i feel their food has terrible texture and lacking in flavour as a result
@@harsh3948 Oil doesn't speed up browning, just makes it more even. If you do a no oil version the heat transfer happens only on some small spots where it touches the pan, which will burn fast. On all other areas happens no maillard reaction so the majority of new flavour is missing. Also some compounds are only fat soluble, if you don't use anything that can change the taste significantly.
Most foods are only able to soak up little, at that point it doesn't matter how much is left in the pan. I like to use rather more than necessary instead of too little.
High quality oils are not unhealthy, they provide essential fatty acids. In addition the digestion and energy release is really slow. Anyway if calorie reduction is a concern I would look more into reducing processed foods with high sugar content. Especially simple sugars go extremely fast into the blood and it's possible to eat an insane amount without feeling full. I don't see a problem with oil/fat usage in home cooking.
Great video Ethan. I feel like your content has been constantly improving for a long time. It's on such a high level now, with excellent pacing, editing and of course the fascinating content.
One thing to consider is the color of your leftovers, because I made tuna noodle casserole with red onions once, cause it was what I had on hand. It was some nice color added to a very white meal on the first day. I barely like the meal on a good day, but when I got it out to reheat the leftovers the lovely red had turned a milky grayish blue. It was more than a little off putting.
It's the anthocyanin that makes the onion (and a lot of other food) red-purple. It changes color based on pH, like red cabbage. So it can turn bluish when in an alkaline environment and very red/pink in acid.
This color change isn't usually noticeable in Indian food because the gravy is colored with turmeric and chilies.
Next time add a tiny bit of vinegar and it'll be back to red😊
I caramelize onions all the time because I also freeze sautéed onions and do 4 bags at a time in one day... ❤ I also use butter/margarine olive and Canola combo in stainless steel Dutch oven pot for a few minutes to have ready to freeze and cool down to bag... the ones I caramelize in 10-15 mins. I just do longer and in strips and have even frozen them as well, and ready to use ... I love eating as a condiment...
I think the main confusion you have with caramelized onions is that what you and the rest of the comments section is doing is not caramelizing onions, it's over sauteing. When really caramelizing there is no maillard. It takes a lot of heat control and several hours, it looks very similar but the brown flavor is absent. It becomes onion candy paste.
THANK YOU
I'm going to assume here by brown flavor you mean lightly burned flavor since the sweetened caramel flavor is the flavor of proper browning😂 I get what you're saying though because I have noticed very very frequently and on this channel specifically also that people do tend to confuse slightly singed saute with caramelized. I do understand why the confusion though because I had no idea until I did it right the first time.
This is exactly the kind of unique content I love about your channel. You're a huge asset to home cooks!
You rock Ethan. Love the long format and happy you’re willing to take the time needed to thoroughly explain a topic rather than rush it through. ❤❤
5:25 pearl onions reach a size of 2 to 3cm (3/4 to 1 1/4 inches) when fully matured. The common colours are gold (brown), red (purple), and white
I love onions. Put them in everything. Grow them in my backyard garden (green onions, chives, red onion, and of course garlic).
I have been known to go through a 50 pound bag in a month ❤
Oooo a backyard onion garden sounds lovely
As a Romanian, we eat loads for raw onions, specifically red ones. Traditionally you would smash it with the palm of your hand and rip it apart rather than cut it (and then eat it raw with smoked meats, cheese, dips, bread, etc). I'm curious if this makes it milder. My grandpa also leaves pungent red onions for 30 mins outside in the winter - he mentioned when it freezes a bit it's more mild. 🤔
The smell of onion breath is unforgettable
Cold does seem to help reduce onion heat. When I make sumac onions, I slice and salt the red onions and the cloudy onion water which comes out of the onions could be used for chemical warfare. A good bath in ice water after slicing also helps lower the heat.
It might be the specific variety of onion(s) traditionally grown in the region. Or even the soil as that affects sulfer concentration. How long the onions were dried and stored can also effect the flavor of onions.
13:10 Ethan, it is not correct to infer that since water is flavorless, the flavor of onions must therefore come from the carbs and proteins. These are the macro-fractions, but plants produce secondary metabolites that are responsible for a lot of their flavors. If you took any spice or herb, and evaluated it the way you evaluated onions, you would come to absolutely erroneous conclusions. The flavors of things cannot simply be attributed to one of their macroscopic fractions. Sometimes the tiniest traces of the flavorful plant secondary metabolites can make a world of difference. These secondary metabolites aren't carbs, and they aren't proteins either.
When I caramelize onions in the pan, I use white wine to stop the browning and prevent the burning, the white wine introduces some nice flavors and some sugar/sweetness.
I wonder what you think about that.
Love these videos. It helps so much to understand the variables in cooking without having to do all the experimentation.
I don't think pearl onions are a mature variety, they have to be either sets or early harvest. When you let onions get to that second growing season and get into full growth, I've noticed that they will almost always differentiate in the center. Like when you cut open a large yellow onion, there's a good chance of the outer layers being full circles, but the center will be two separate growing half circles. I love strong flavors, especially vinegar and onions, so I've always loved cocktail onions as a snack since I was a kid and ive eaten more of them than i can count. And I have never once encountered a cocktail onion, which is a pearl onion, that had those two half circles in the center. It was always just the early growth of full circles all the way down to the very center
Yea I was kind of leaning towards them being an early second season harvest, but it wasn’t super clear!
pearl onions are a different species closer to leeks than other onions.
I've literally added sugar to caramelise onions for my whole life. It reduces the time immensely and it gives amazing flavour depending on the sugar source.
Its a completely different thing to add normal sugar, demarara sugar, honey or jam.
It's also really different to make them from scratch without adding sugar. It takes a few hours but yeah it's not really comparable.
17:35 another thing to factor in to the flavour intensity once chopped is how quickly they're used
I love these videos. Thank you so much for doing these. Please keep them coming. So much fun to watch!
I know bro cried so much just for this video, the dedication is real folks, gotta appreciate that.
Agreed 💯
To help with watering eyes while cutting onions have a damp paper towel beside your cutting board and cover the the freshly chopped onions with it. As mentioned, the sulfur compounds that cause you to cry are attracted to water so give them something closer then your eyes to bond to.
@@melissaharris3389 Wow thanks for the advice! I'll definitely try this out!
I've been using that method for quick caramelised onions for a long time. Adding a touch of sugar really amps them up. I prefer doing it for a longer time but sometimes you need them in a rush.
Pearl onions, along with Cipollini and Baby onions, represent small onion varieties specifically cultivated for their size through certain agricultural practices. They are typically grown from sets, which are immature onion bulbs. These sets are planted and harvested within a single growing season, usually before they can grow into full-sized onions.
The cultivation process involves planting the onion sets closely together in dense patterns. This method of planting restricts the space each onion has to expand, thereby limiting the size of the bulb that each plant can produce. This agricultural technique is key to ensuring the onions do not grow beyond a desired small size.
Additionally, the timing of the planting and harvesting is crucial. These onion varieties are often harvested earlier than traditional onions, which also contributes to their smaller size. For instance, while a typical onion might be left in the ground to mature fully, these small varieties are pulled much sooner to maintain their petite scale.
This type of cultivation is used not only to achieve specific sizes but also to manage the yield of crops more effectively. By controlling the size and harvest time, farmers can produce these onions more quickly and efficiently, fitting multiple growing cycles into a single growing season if conditions allow. This makes Pearl, Cipollini, and Baby onions popular choices for growers aiming for fast crop rotation and efficient use of space.
33:18 i sont think 1 and 5 are supposed to be the same color, i had to rewatch this segment a few times to know the order
Yeah, me too
Yeah, in the actual list with names the first one Sweet, is in a golden orange-yellow, whereas number 1 under the bowl is a blue-violet color.
This mistake is even more confusing because in the list of names there are two very similar golden colors used, and in the sequence of numbers there are two very similar violet colors used.
One point for me is how big the onion is. Here in Europe most of them are medium size. Where I live, red onions are quite small so I pay the same price/kg but have more skin to peel/ throw away Surface m² to Volume m³ ratio. So I only buy them, when friends come along and the visuals are a factor.
Where I live red onions are generally larger!
And it's not just peel to "flesh" ratio, but also how much onion you get at once. When you only need a bit, why cut open a huge onion and let the rest dry out.
Oh, and red onions also tend to be milder over here.
One of the best videos I've watched on food and cooking in a LONG time. Thank you!
love this! only thing i'd add is a green onion option. i love chives & scallions, especially as a supporting character, that lifts all the flavors up together; &again, amazing video!
1:16 that's now how percentages work, Ethan. 3.5 _per cent_ over 0.62 would be 0.64g sugar.
It's not 3.5x either since that would only work if the Russet had 1.2g of sugar (1.2*3.5=~4.18).
It has 3.5g more sugar, or 6.85x the total amount of Russets, or 573% _more_ than Russets.
Biting into an onion like an apple has always been one of those intrusive thoughts whenever I chop an onion. I love onions raw but have never just bitten into one.
My middle child went through a phase shortly after she began crawling, of having an intense love for raw onions. We stored ours within her easy reach, and almost every morning, while we were getting everyone ready to leave for work and school, she would grab one to munch on like an apple. We never tried to stop her as she clearly loved them, and it wasn't dangerous as long as we were watching her in case she took a bite large enough to choke on. Fortunately, we made a point of removing the outer skins before putting them away and she had neither the bite force nor teeth required to do anything beyond poking a couple little holes and sucking out that tasty onion juice she so adored. We did get a little bit tired of apologizing to the sitter for her onion breath, though. The day she managed to get more than she was used to was the last time she went for that particular morning snack.
you should try it, it can be very delicious depending on how its prepared - maybe next time you buy onions; keep one in the fridge for a while (removing the outer layers) then just munch on it - its not an uncommon snack, ive seen many eat onions like that (and tomatoes) so yeah, go for it
@RecliningWhale, I have chopped my share of onions but have to say that biting into an onion like an apple is a thought which has never occurred to me even once. I love onions - raw or cooked - but I have never felt the urge to bite into one!
In regards to you small onion question, the answer is yes to all three... depending on the variety, some just only get that big, some are just bigger onions picked earlier, some are planted from seed and picked in the first year, others are second year bulbs.
I would like to note that most small ( pearl ) onion varieties are just large onion varieties that are picked early. They tend to have a more mild and sweet flavor.
I came here to say nearly the same thing!