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Who the Hell Uses Onion Juice?
- michaelbuckbee 9y agoWhat I find most interesting about this is just what a difference there is between cooking at that time and today in terms of what is 'plain', 'spicy', 'savory', etc. I had a conversation with my dad (currently in his late 60s) about what eating was like growing up and he said: "Well, we didn't have any spicy food." and I asked: "Like what? Mexican? Schezuwan? Thai?" and his answer was: "Any food with garlic".
- Spooky23 9y agoReminds me of my grandparents. Spicy for them was shake and baked bbq chicken. Otherwise, the main flavorings in use were salt, butter, yellow onion and microscopic quantities of pepper.
- jandrese 9y agoHealth cookbooks are the worst for this. They'll call for 2 lbs of beans, 2 onions, a cubic foot of leafy greens, half a dozen carrots, and 1/8 of a tsp of salt. They seem to be ashamed of flavor like it's a naughty sin that they have to hide from the decent folk.
- blt 9y agoPeople think salt is bad for you... They don't understand the role of salt in cooking. Let them try eating unsalted bread. It will be an educational experience.
- upvotinglurker 9y agoYes, they're not afraid of "flavor" in general (at least the ones I've encountered call for plenty of chiles, herbs, etc.) but the perceived harms of salt in particular.
- crookshanked 9y agoThat is rather interesting to hear. I will need to have the same conversation with my elders sometime. Coming from the south garlic is in the majority of the dishes I first learned to cook. This fresh onion juice concept is thought provoking as well. Recently tried making latke and upon shredding my onions was left with onion juice but it did not occur to me that this liquid could be put to use.
- pacaro 9y agoAn Armenian friend of mine marinades chicken in onion juice (obtained by crushing halved onions with his bare hands), salt, and black pepper, before grilling. Delicious
- abpavel 9y agoWell, savory is one of the five basic tastes, so I don't think that would change a lot - it's just fat. However spicy can be any type of spice, so it would likely differ even between individual families within the same block today.
- maxerickson 9y agoSavory is "umami". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami
- ghaff 9y agoWikipedia notwithstanding, they're not really synonyms. Savory is a broader term that is essentially intended to contrast with sweet. If I make an unsweetened herb bread with sage and thyme or whatever, it would be correct to call that a savory bread even though it's definitely not umami (i.e. meaty/brothy).
- maxerickson 9y agoContext notwithstanding too right? The comment I replied to used the term in the context of the 5 basic tastes, not as a culinary term.
- ghaff 9y agoFair enough. It's almost certainly more correct to list umami as one of the basic tastes, rather than savory. (I was more commenting on Wikipedia suggesting they're the same thing when they're really not.)
- zeveb 9y ago> It's almost certainly more correct to list umami as one of the basic tastes, rather than savory. I really don't think so: 'savory' is an actual English word while 'umami' is a Japanese one. Writing 'umami' like writing 'arugula' instead of 'rocket' or 'cilantro' instead of 'coriander.' And 'umami' isn't really any more accurate than 'savory': it's a 100-year-old neologism from the Japanese word for 'delicious.' Given a choice between two words which aren't necessarily perfect fits for the concept, why not stick with the native one?
- jackhack 9y agoHa! Great story. And to think I was disappointed the other night because I couldn't find the exact type of hot pepper I was after and had to settle for habaneros. We are living in a golden age of food. Yet wars were fought over access to black pepper. It's difficult to believe, but just 100 years ago a food as commonplace as spaghetti with tomato sauce was considered somewhat exotic; at the least predominately an ethnic Italian dish. Even 50 years ago, chicken was considered an 'occasional' meat. Cornell university is famous for a basting sauce, as a result of an effort to encourage more domestic consumption of chicken. I wonder if Pad Thai, bulgogi, or stretchy Turkish ice-cream will be considered everyday foods in another 50 years.
- mrob 9y ago>Cornell university is famous for a basting sauce See: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cornell-chicken-barbecue-sauce-upstate https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cornell-chicken-barbec...
- jackhack 9y agoYep. That's the stuff. We use it all the time on grilled chicken. Best made fresh (and it's quite easy) but there's a commercial brand called "Spidie's State Fair Sauce" or similar that gets very close for those who can't wait.
- jdietrich 9y agoSee the BBC's legendary spaghetti tree hoax from April Fool's Day, 1957. A lot of viewers really were taken in by the idea that spaghetti grew on trees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU
- pikchurn 9y ago> I wonder if Pad Thai, bulgogi, or stretchy Turkish ice-cream will be considered everyday foods in another 50 years. I'll have to try stretchy Turkish ice-cream sometime (where do you find that?) but Pad Thai and bulgogi are already everyday foods you can find on every corner of every strip mall in the part of America where I live.
- Digory 9y agoBoston/New England folk cuisine was (and is) still very bland. Pot roast, baked beans, mashed potatoes, brown bread, apples, etc. Very similar to the "English cooking" that used to be derided all over. Even today, I have a friend from Boston who treats ketchup as a spicy condiment, almost like midwestern friends treat Tabasco. Other parts of the US had a spicier food culture -- the Cajuns, the Southwest, African-Americans, etc. But the wealthy parts of America liked very bland, well-processed food.
- minikites 9y agoI'm originally from the Southwest but I went to college in the Northeast. One of my roommates was from Maine and he introduced me to the concept of a "boiled dinner" which he raved about and I was quite skeptical of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_boiled_dinner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_boiled_dinner
- cm2012 9y agoCorned beef and cabbage is legit, let me assure you.
- qalmakka 9y agoWe have a strong tradition of boiling meat and vegetables in Northern Italy. You get a delicious stock where you can cook pasta into (either standard, or filled, such as tortellini) and also very delicate, yet tasty, boiled beef and chicken. These often come with additiomal mashed potatoes and sauces based on parsley, bell peppers or mustard, sometimes mayonnaise. In Cremona they make something called "mostarda", which is candied fruit spiced with a shitload of mustard. It's absolutely weird and burns like hell, but boy how delicious it is.
- elboru 9y agoI'm not a native English speaker, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think English needs a new word related to pepper spiciness, for me sometimes is difficult to translate it. In Spanish we have "picoso" to describe pepper's hot feeling. Since spicy in English could describe a long variety of spices, flavors and sensations. Maybe 50 years ago it wasn't necessary since they were foreign flavors, but now that your food and taste has evolved and globalized it could be necessary.
- abritinthebay 9y agoYou're not wrong. The closest I think in English is how we have modified the word "spice" to be, in context, "spiced" vs "spicy". The former implies the "herbs and spices" and the latter the "hot pepper" types. But it's not exactly consistent. We of course have the modifier "hot" which works. And we stole piquant from the french, but that is a little different I think.
- justinlardinois 9y agoFor "spiced" we also have the word "seasoned." It has a handful of meanings, but if you're using it to describe a flavor it should be clear that's the meaning you're using. I've also heard foods described as having "bite" to indicate that they have a strong, spicy flavor, but not necessarily a "hot" one.
- abritinthebay 9y ago“Bite” can also be about acidic flavor too (or both in the case of vinegar siluable spices!)
- mirimir 9y agoBut then there's ginger hot vs pepper hot.
- Retra 9y ago"Hot" is also ambiguous; probably more so.
- csours 9y agoMy dad hates spicy foods (any peppers, garlic, etc). Ok, people can like what they like. But then I noticed he eats spicy radishes like they're nothing...
- INTPenis 9y agoInteresting that he'd say garlic because my dad (in his 70s now) lives in his hometown in Croatia. Where most people grow crops, it's a rural community. And near the center most crops are just for personal consumption. Yet no one grows garlic. I was shocked by this. He said he'd be the first to grow garlic in the whole village. He has of course lived many years in Sweden where I was born and raised before he moved back for his twilight years. In Sweden garlic has been very common for my entire life, since at least 1985. I can only speculate but it's likely that I had access to garlic due to global imports. And it's also likely his fellow villagers, many in their 50s and older, aren't used to garlic because they didn't grow up with it.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoIt's a great narrative and you should read it, but if you don't want to the TLDR is that it's just what it sounds like, and was generally used wherever you'd use minced garlic today.
- greglindahl 9y agoI also found it interesting that the stuff you buy in a bottle is much tamer than making it from scratch.
- hinkley 9y agoMost spices lose their kick with age. They oxidize or the volatiles evaporate. This is why people will grow their own herbs.
- zer00eyz 9y agoThis isn't true of all spices. Oregano, and rosemary spring to mind as ones where dried is better - and in the case of rosemary mixing can create flavor dynamics that don't exist with one or the other. Basil is an interesting one in that the flavor changes as it dries - they contribute different flavors depending on the state of the herb and how your using them. Volatiles and oxidation aren't always a bad thing.
- hinkley 9y agoSure. I expect water soluble flavors aren’t moving anywhere until the leaf is dry. And maybe the volatiles are the bad part of the flavor, not the good part. and in the case of rosemary mixing can create flavor dynamics that don't exist with one or the other. I don’t know why this amused me. I’m imagining selling small batch single malt rosemary to hipsters. Wanna go into business?
- exhilaration 9y agoMy aunt from Pakistan shook her head when she saw jars of minced garlic and minced onion in our pantry. She said making those ingredients from scratch dramatically improves the flavor of Indian food.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoThis is a beautiful little story.
- perseusprime11 9y agoI heard Onion Juice is also good for your hair.
- jpm_sd 9y agoIf you're interested in old-fashioned cooking and/or nautical history, this is a fascinating read: https://www.amazon.com/Lobscouse-Spotted-Dog-Gastronomic-Companion/dp/0393320944/ https://www.amazon.com/Lobscouse-Spotted-Dog-Gastronomic-Com...
- gkya 9y agoThere is the "çi börek" from Eskisehir in Turkey, a fried pastry with minced meat inside, where they use actual onion juice (juicing the onion like you would juice an apple, basically) to season (and also partially cook) the meat.
- makeset 9y agoCrimean Tatar national dish, through the diaspora in Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebureki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebureki
- gkya 9y ago"National dish" is one of the silliest things nationalism has to offer. Food does not have nationality.
- kbart 9y agoIt doesn't in current, cosmopolitan world, but for centuries different cultures had original dishes not seen elsewhere. We still call such dishes that originated during these times "national". What's wrong with that? It has nothing to do with political ideologies. In English "national" might sound a bit strange and I see "traditional" used more often, but in many other languages it's literary called "national dish".
- cestith 9y agoI sometimes use onion juice in stews, soups, hot sauces, barbecue sauces, and other stirred items. It's a good addition to the pan for certain sautés as well. I get mine by putting an onion through my electric fruit and vegetable juicer. A little does go a long way. Be careful about leftovers, as it can taste stronger the second day when chilled in the refrigerator overnight in a mixed broth.
- neaden 9y agoHow similar is it to the flavor of grated onions?
- cestith 9y agoWhen it's fresh the flavor is pretty close but of course the texture is different. I'd imagine pre-boiled with salt and vinegar it'd be stable longer. It tastes fresher and more potent to me than onion powder or dried minced onion which is more what I'd replace with it.
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoI put onions in soups and stews all the time, but I just begin by sauteeing the onion. How does using the juice instead change the flavor?
- cestith 9y agoA sautéed onion is going to be more mellow than a raw one. The juice will be more intense per weight and volume than the minced or diced raw root. It's really a matter of a few drops for a pot of soup. In my chili I often use both yellow and white fresh onions with the meat, plus onion powder as part of my homemade chili powder, plus a few drops of onion juice in the sauce to simmer down before combining the meat and sauce. If you're really curious, there's no description I can give that would match trying it. Just don't go crazy and add the juice of a couple whole onions to a vegetable broth. Drops really will do the trick.
- beat 9y agoI caught the pungent odor of John Thorne's writing right away. If you dig this, he has published several books that are basically collected essays, digging into some ingredient or recipe this way (I have read Simple Cooking, Outlaw Cook, and Pot on the Fire). One nice thing about his books is he has these sort of dreamlike fantasies about what a food is supposed to taste like, and pursues recipes based on this imagination. That means that, unlike a lot of cookbooks, just about every John Thorne recipe is amazing (his pecan pie is the best I've ever tried, because he directly tackled the problem of cloying sweetness and gummy texture). Highly recommended if you care about food.
- colanderman 9y ago> he has these sort of dreamlike fantasies about what a food is supposed to taste like, and pursues recipes based on this imagination I find this to be a good approach to software development as well.
- thenomad 9y agoThis approximately describes my approach to game development, too. It works exceptionally well there as gamedev is all about crafting a fantasy and an experience.
- isoprophlex 9y agoMan, does this guy know how to write an English sentence! Highly entertaining!
- beat 9y agoJohn Thorne's books are good for reading just for fun, whether or not you plan to cook anything in them, or go try the things he's tried. One of my favorite essays of his is on banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches), where he's just totally baffled about how they even do that. Lucky for me, I live in the Twin Cities, ground zero for the best banh mi in the world. The essence of banh mi is basically experiencing every sensation your mouth can experience, all at the same time. It's warm, cool, crisp, chewy, greasy, sweet, sour, salty, spicy, fragrant, and ALL AT ONCE.
- fuball63 9y ago"As with garlic, halfway measures can be worse than none at all." I like this sentiment a lot.
- joezydeco 9y agoThis reminds me of the old Paul Lukas magazine Beer Frame - The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption. Some of his writing made it to the web and on Core77.com. http://www.core77.com/inconspicuous/ http://www.core77.com/inconspicuous/
- t0mbstone 9y agoWouldn't onion juice essentially just yield the same flavor result as onion powder + water?
- Synaesthesia 9y agoI think it’s gonna be a lot stronger because onion powder certainly doesn’t have the “zing” of fresh onion.
- Fnoord 9y agoBingo, was about to post that but read the comments instead. I got many herbs and spices in my kitchen, including little bottles of powdered, dried garlic & onion. I prefer fresh, but when I'm lazy I use that instead. There's also Tabasco for pungent/acidic taste (which also contains vinegar, like this onion juice product) whereas chili sauce here [according to my anecdata] is often 90+% sugar. Now, the powdered, dried garlic is strong in flavour, but dried onion less so. You still miss out on the fried, caramelised taste of (stir) fried onions though or the sharper taste of fresh onion (especially the red ones). I do love either of these, but in e.g. a soup, if you don't require the bite, you're good to go with powder. Unless when you're making a French onion soup. Speaking of soup one could also check their bouillon powder ingredients. Some are just mostly salt (or, less salt + MSG), but some contain a complex mix of a variety of herbs and vegetables. Onion itself (as well as garlic) is found and used in so many dishes in my country it is too much to mention. From herring to frikandel/frites special, gehaktbal, and even the vegetarian clone of the gehaktbal, "gehacktbal", contains it.
- scentoni 9y agoOnion (and its relatives) and horseradish (and its relatives) store the components of a sulfur-based binary chemical weapon to deter being eaten by animals. When the tissue is ruptured, the chemical deterrent is formed and released. However, the compound breaks down with time, oxygen, heat, etc.
- itomato 9y agoIt would taste like reconstituted onion powder. I'm not a food scientist, but one could say something like: Intact alliums have no pungency, since the volatile products are only released following the interaction of the enzyme, alliinase, with the S-alk(en)ylcysteine sulfoxide (alliin, I) which occurs when tissue is damaged or disrupted (Figure 1). The initial products of this enzymic hydrolysis are ammonia, pyruvate, and an alk(en)ylthiosulphinate (allicin, II). The latter, which possesses odor characteristics typical of the freshly cut tissue, can undergo further nonenzymic reactions to yield a variety of compounds, including thiosulfinate [III] and di- and trisulfides [IV]. These compounds have slightly differing flavors and odors, and may impart a cooked note to steam-distilled onion or leek oils. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B012227055X008622 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B012227055...
- farseer 9y agoIt's an age old remedy for an upset stomach caused by salmonella due to it's anti bacterial properties. If you have the courage to drink it of course.
- ctdonath 9y agoin those days lots of kitchen shelves were not a necessity: a grocery order was a phone call away, and the milkman and the Cushman’s Bakery man came to the back door. For all our enthralled praising of ordering online, remember it's been available in some form for a long time. Massive Sears catalogs (complete houses included), daily milk deliveries, grocery deliveries, etc ... today we just have more to choose from, and can use magic glass slates to do it.
- kazinator 9y agoIn those days, it wasn't so global. I got bike parts a few months ago from Chain Reaction; that's in Ireland. I'm on the West Coast of Canada.
- raldi 9y agoFood was way more expensive back then; the additional expense of having milk or bread brought to your door was much smaller. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/58066/aug13_datafeature_volpe_fig03.png https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/58066/aug13_datafeat...
- lifeisstillgood 9y agoWonderful read - thank you
- PunchTornado 9y agoOnion juice gives chills through my body. When i was a kid and a bit ill, my mother made me onion juice as medicine. The worst thing i ever drank or ate. Me and my siblings usually tried to hide our cold just because of onion juice. Judt boiled onions and you were supposed to drink it because my mom read it in some magazine where it said it is good for curing a cold.
- sgolestane 9y agoMy grandma mixed lime juice with the onion juice to give us an extra boost of Vitamin C. :-)
- et-al 9y ago..so anecdotally was it effective for fighting the cold? Or just for getting the kids out of bed?
- ComputerGuru 9y agoThat was my grandmother with her - I’ll never forgive her for it, may she Rest In Peace - mashed garlic and lemon purée drink. Blergh!
- schlowmo 9y agoYou poor one. My mother also gave me "onion juice" when I got a cold, but there was one big difference: The onions were cooked with tons of rocked candy. I have to admit that it was my favorite medicine. Maybe you should try that recipe to cure your onion juice trauma ;)
- kxs 9y agoI used to get a lot of sinus infections, to remedy this, I drank for an extended period of my life cooled "onion juice" (onion + water + honey, cooked for ~1h). My whole family was disgusted by it, but I somehow enjoyed it.
- 094459 9y agoPhew! for a moment, I thought this was some obscure new js framework :)
- bduerst 9y agoI was expecting a new TOR client
- tomcam 9y agoNow if he can only find a justification for Clamato juice
- justusthane 9y agoCaesar. What other justification do you need?
- wombatpm 9y agoHey its 99% clam free!
- chomp 9y agoMicheladas! Though I prefer a Zing Zang michelada myself.
- always_good 9y agoDid you mean clam juice? Micheladas validate Clamato, though I'm not sure clam juice is actually necessary in Clamato since Clamato tastes more like a different take on V8 than something with clam in it.
- elstere 9y agoI remember my mum giving me onion juice to drink as a remedy for sore throat when I was a kid...I think the sheer thought of having to have the treatment repeated cured my throat :)
- Double_a_92 9y agoMix it with honey for your kids...
- GordonS 9y agoIf this is literally the juice from squeezed onions, then I use it. It acts as a great meat tenderiser and also adds a nice flavour - works great with lamb! I believe this is fairly common in Iran.
- andrew_wc_brown 9y agoI hate this kind of writing, where I'm slogging through story to get to the utility of Onion Juice.
- srirachahot 9y agoNot everything has to be utilitarian; some things can just be beautiful.
- Jedd 9y agoI'm surprised that pickled onions didn't get a mention. A standard pickled recipe looks a lot like the onion juice ingredients: onions, vinegar, salt - but commonly includes some sugar (I suspect this is historically a recent addition, given the age of this preserving method and the scarcity of sugar more than a century ago). Pickled onions (and eggs, herrings, etc) are commonly seen in British pubs - scooped out and sold by the unit as a salty comestible in the age old tradition of making your customers thirstier.
- netaustin 9y agoI had a similar “wtf” sensation when I encountered onion juice in a Michael Solomonov (Zahav, Philadelphia) recipe I recently made (http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/middle-eastern-lamb-skewers http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/middle-eastern-lamb-skewe...). It called for a whole pureed onion in the marinade, and the very idea stunned and inspired me. The lamb was great; the funk cooked out but the harmony stayed. It got me thinking the same thing this post does: where else is there onion juice, figuratively speaking? Worthy, but driven out by a manipulation of culture?
- isaaclyman 9y agoThis reminded me, I keep wondering why the tamarind fruit has been left out of Western cuisine. You find trace amounts in Worcestershire sauce and the occasional Indian dish and you can get tamarind juice/candy at some Mexican places if you know what to look for, but by and large it's unheard of and unobtainable. Pity, too, it's got such a nice texture and flavor when prepared correctly. I know tamarind trees aren't native to the Western hemisphere, but that hasn't ever stopped us before.
- mirimir 9y agoThere's Italian tamerindo. It's great in carbonated water.
- mark-r 9y agoI had a recipe for Pad Thai that called for Tamarind paste, and I couldn't even find it at at an Oriental grocery.
- colordrops 9y agoWhat part of the country are you from? I'm guessing not a big city based on the term "Oriental". No offense taken :) It can be found in many of the Asian markets in Los Angeles.
- ianai 9y agoI use both garlic and onion juice in my hash browns.
- qwerty456127 9y agoSome people use onion juice mixed with some oil as nasal drops to treat running nose infections (dunno if it works actually).
- kulu2002 9y agoOther uses of Onion Juice apart from cooking; 1. Onion Juice + Honey = Instant cough relief 2. Applying Onion juice on bald head helps regrowing hair. It is every effective. [1] https://www.livestrong.com/article/287051-how-to-use-onion-as-a-home-remedy-for-a-cough/ https://www.livestrong.com/article/287051-how-to-use-onion-a... [2] https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-had-any-success-using-onion-juice-to-regrow-their-hair https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-had-any-success-using-onion...
- mmjaa 9y agoAnother great use is for ear infections. During summer months after a lake session or two, if one of our kids gets a sore ear we make a compress of onion bits (usually quite juiced up) and place it over the affected ear. Quite often - within minutes many times - this just solves the ear-ache and the kids go back to the lake.
- lerie82 9y ago4 paragraphs in we get to the onion juice, but I don't think we ever found out what onion juice is for, so I did the allrecipes search and there is plenty http://allrecipes.com/search/results/?ingIncl=onion%20juice&sort=re http://allrecipes.com/search/results/?ingIncl=onion%20juice&...
- mkbkn 9y agoDon't know if you know it, but using onion juice can help immensely in growing hair, beard hair etc. It is a very effective remedy.
- feintruled 9y agoWondering why this has come up - is it due to the recent fad among MRAs to drink onion juice to supposedly boost their testosterone and make them more manly? https://www.indy100.com/article/4chan-onions-pol-testosterone-juice-drinking-soy-boys-right-wing-politics-will-sommer-8066821 https://www.indy100.com/article/4chan-onions-pol-testosteron...
- tux1968 9y agoThat article doesn't have a single reference to MRAs and speculates about it being a 4chan troll to begin with.
- sideshowb 9y agoWho uses onion juice? Mr Scruff, in his merch https://ninjatune.net/images/releases/drinks-to-try-in-this-mug-fabric-softener-main.jpg https://ninjatune.net/images/releases/drinks-to-try-in-this-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Scruff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Scruff