Turkish Sumac Onions Recipe (10 minutes!) (2024)

FAQs

Turkish Sumac Onions Recipe (10 minutes!)? ›

Comment. Published: May 24, 2022. This post may contain affiliate links. Tangy, smoky, earthy, and slightly sour, sumac is an essential spice in Middle Eastern cooking. With its deep red hue and fruity, citrusy flavor, sumac spice is the perfect way to add acidity and color to your meals!

Comment. Published: May 24, 2022. This post may contain affiliate links. Tangy, smoky, earthy, and slightly sour, sumac is an essential spice in Middle Eastern cooking. With its deep red hue and fruity, citrusy flavor, sumac spice is the perfect way to add acidity and color to your meals!

Submerge Them in Cold Water

Submerging them in cold water takes away that intense, sharp bite from the raw onion. The cold water helps the enzyme that causes onions to have their pungent flavor to leach out. Similarly, storing onions in the refrigerator will help mellow them out when you go to use them.

You can get rid of the strong taste by soaking sliced onions in ice water for 20 to 30 minutes or by sprinkling them with an acid such as vinegar. Onions soaked in ice water will get very crisp while those sprinkled with vinegar will soften a bit, but they will lose the strong taste and become sweeter.

People dry and powder these berries for use as an herbal medicine or culinary spice. Sumac is rich in a variety of nutrients and antioxidant compounds. Early research suggests it may be beneficial for blood sugar control and relief of exercise-induced muscle pain.

Many people remember the name "sumac" in conjunction with poisonous plants, and worry that all sumacs must be toxic. However, the common sumac species which grow along roads and in fields are not poison sumac. They are either staghorn or smooth sumac, both species quite harmless to touch.

Onions - soaking in cold water to soften the flavor

When preparing raw onions, soak in cold water before hand to remove some of the pungency and soften the flavor. However since soaking too long will dilute the flavor, soaking in cold water for 5 to 10 minutes is recommended.

Raw onions can be hard to digest, for some. Onions can cause a good deal more than just leaving you with that pungent onion-breath. Some people pass gas and feel digestive discomfort after eating onions in their raw form, while others burp and bloat.

Acidic Ingredients: Incorporate acidic ingredients like lemon juice, vinegar, or tomatoes. Acids can help counteract the strong onion taste and provide a more balanced flavor profile. Sweetness: Adding a touch of sweetness can help counteract the sharpness of the onion.

Adding sugar to the onions will speed up the browning due to the increased levels of sugars in the system in addition to the caramelization of sugars themselves that takes place independently from the Maillard reaction.

What is the best onion for salad? ›

Red Onions: The salad onion. While you can cook with it, it's less overpowering than white or yellow onions, making it ideal for uses that require raw onion. The colour fades as you cook them. Great for Greek salad, on burgers, etc.

They are delicious in salads and their tender green leaves are edible. Like green onions, there is rarely a need to rinse them off after cutting to mellow their flavor; their flavor is mellow already. Red onions vary greatly in their pungency, but the rinsing technique works great with them.

Sumac has a fruity flavor almost like lemon. The sourness can balance the acidity of a dish.

The flavor of sumac can be likened to the tang of fresh-squeezed lemon juice; it's tart and sharp, but also contains a hint of sweetness, along with lingering floral notes. “It's a subtle tang with some fruitiness that you wouldn't get from lemon juice,” says food blogger Amina Al-Saigh. “I also love its pink color.

Dried thyme and oregano make great ground sumac substitutes as they both have a similar earthy flavor profile. For a more intense flavor, you could also opt for marjoram or sesame seeds. For an even more intense flavor, you could add cumin powder or ground coriander to your mix.

Even though it varies greatly depending on where you are in the Middle East (specific recipes are sometimes closely-guarded secrets!), za'atar is generally a combination of dried oregano, thyme, and/or marjoram (woodsy and floral), with sumac (tangy and acidic) and toasted sesame seeds (nutty and rich).