ONIONS: MAKING YOU CRY SINCE 3500 BCE

There are many types of onions: green onions, white onions, red onions, shallots...you get the idea, right?

I find onions distasteful- if you told me to choose between eating shawarma for the rest of my life or eating a dish containing onions, I'd choose shawarma in a heartbeat.

Usually, I eat onions under one condition ONLY: chopped up into minuscule pieces, making the taste no longer discernible. Interestingly, onions are commonly used this way as a mirepoix to improve soups, sauces, rice dishes, and more. It's a chef's second-best ingredient, with salt being the first.

Most of the time, I can easily pick out the onions and continue eating my dish, depending on how it’s been prepared. Cooked onions are slimy and when raw, they're crunchy, like apples.

Onions deserve the respect mushrooms have (to an extent). I have a friend who would go on a full rant about how ’bland, uncultured, and tasteless‘ your taste buds are if you hate mushrooms.

And so, for your entertainment, I did a month-long challenge concerning onions and will be reviewing a few food options I've tried.

French Onion Soup

I went big for this dish, but you know what they say go big or go home :')

Strong, rich, and beefy. This could potentially describe two things, the soup- or a cow. The flavor was unexpected as I had anticipated an overwhelming onion flavor, but that was not the case. The soup consisted of a delicious savory beef broth that was both delectable and salty, with plenty of onions in it. The onions surprised me the most; the minute it entered my mouth, it became incredibly tender, to the point where it just dissolved.

The best part about this dish was the crunchy, cheesy toast on top that blended wonderfully with the flavor of the soup as it soaked up the rich broth, leaving the onions at the bottom (not the best ending since it was just a bowl full of soggy caramelized onions).

People say that French Onion Soup is the ultimate comfort soup and I think this title is completely deserved. I'd give this soup a 7.5/10.

Queen of Chicken >:'(

This dish was disappointing. The onion flavor didn't come through at all, not accounting for the lack of taste in general. The seasoning of the chicken was also weaker than you’d expect. The whole sandwich was, to sum it up, wanting. The only positive side of this dish was the texture of the chicken. I was skeptical if an onion even made it into the sandwich as it was dominated by the other ingredients and didn't have any role in the texture, balance, and/or flavor. -2930901291/1

Poor Man's Sandwich

Peanut butter and sweet onion stuffed between two slices of white bread. I suggested it to my friends as a joke, and they BEGGED me not to do it, so obviously, I had to do it :')

The first bite just tasted like apples and peanut butter. The onions were a bit too juicy. However, it had that nice crunch which-as mentioned earlier- is quite similar to apples. The sweetness from the peanut butter masked the pungent and sharp flavor coming from the onion, altogether resulting in a confusing but exotic taste with a slight tinge of heat. The flavors were much milder than you‘d expect. I recommend trying it! It's an odd but good combination! 8/10

Overall, this challenge was enjoyable and...interesting. However, even after this month-long experience, I'm still wary of onions, especially concerning those dishes where the onion is obviously visible. This experience, although extremely traumatizing, has made me more open to trying onion-filled dishes.

Thanks shallot for reading!