How to prepare a delicious appetizer from pickled red onions: recipes and benefits of the vegetable

Recipe 1: Cucumber Salad with Red Onion

1 red onion, halved and thinly sliced
3 tablespoons of rice vinegar (can be replaced with regular 9%, but rice vinegar is softer)
3 cucumbers (if you find an old cucumber, peel it, remove the seeds and slice it thinly)
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped lettuce leaves
2 tablespoons chopped dill

Mix onion with 1 tbsp. l vinegar.
Wash the cucumbers, cut into semicircles.
Wash the lettuce leaves and cut into strips.
Wash the onion, peel it, wash it again and cut into half rings.
Wash and chop the dill.
Combine onions, cucumbers and chopped lettuce in a large bowl. Toss with olive oil and remaining 2 tablespoons. vinegar. Add dill, season with salt and pepper.
Refrigerate the cucumber salad and enjoy!

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French onion soup is a phenomenon as incomprehensible to Russian people as it is beloved and close to the French.

This soup, made from a huge amount of onions, rich broth and croutons, is a clear demonstration that you can make a very tasty dish from the simplest and most affordable ingredients.

For the recipe for classic onion soup, we turned to the chef of the Moscow restaurant “Brasserie Most” Evgeniy Utkin.

“Onion soup was invented in France a long, long time ago. On the one hand, this is the food of the poor, because onion soup is prepared from very simple ingredients - onions, broth, bread. On the other hand, there is a legend that it was invented by some French king. Allegedly, he was left alone at home, so to speak, and wanted to eat.

Onion soup is quite laconic in terms of ingredients and easy to make. The main thing is to find patience and a couple of hours of time. If you have beef bones in the freezer, you can cook broth from them, then fry the onions, mix everything, bring to taste and add cheese and croutons. This is simple.

In a restaurant, the scheme is more complicated, because it is possible to cook soup for a very long time and because you need to prepare many liters at once. For example, at home you don’t have to pay as much attention to carefully caramelizing the onions and mixing the broth with demi-glace. If you can still buy demi-glace (and not cook it yourself, as we do, for example, in a restaurant), but who will caramelize onions for several hours?

But here's how to make onion soup at home.

Use young, fresh onions. The old one, which sits for a long time, becomes very bitter. When stewed for a long time, it remains fibrous and will be difficult to chew, despite the time we devote to the stewing process. An hour, two or five - it will remain hard and will get stuck in your teeth. It happens that we also do everything right, but the result is this kind of texture.

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We prepare the soup according to a classic recipe, so we do not experiment with the product itself. Probably, the soup can be made from other types of onions, but we make it as expected, from ordinary onions.

In order to cook 4 servings of soup, we need 1.5 kg of onions. Cut it into rings.

Take 10 grams of thyme sprigs, remove the leaves from them, chop them into dust: the finer, the more aroma the thyme will give off. Try an experiment: smell the thyme on the sprig, and then smell the thyme you chopped, and feel the difference.

When you first chop the onion, it will seem like there is a lot of it. But when you start frying it, you will see how quickly it loses volume.

We don't use butter because the soup is already rich and rich (due to the broth, cheese, bread), but you can add butter. Put a little at a time and add by eye as needed.

You should not fry more than 500-600 g of onion at a time; if you put all the onions in one saucepan at once, it will be inconvenient for you to stir it, plus there is a chance that the onions will burn somewhere and not fry somewhere.

So, for our volume of soup, we will start frying the onion in 500 g portions in a saucepan.

First, place the saucepan over high heat (you can fry the onions in different saucepans at the same time if you are sure that you can keep track of everything) and fry the onions, stirring vigorously. The onion will begin to dry out and turn yellow, as well as lose its structure and soften. Typically it takes 7-15 minutes from the start of frying to this point.

Now add 50 grams of garlic, cut into strips. If you add garlic towards the end of frying or already in the soup, it will not stew, it will be tough, it will not release all its aroma, and it may even turn green.

Turn the heat down to medium and continue cooking.

This is how amber the onion will become after an hour of frying. It will fry about 10 times, which is why you need so much of it initially.

Onions contain a lot of sugar. During the frying process, it caramelizes, due to which, in fact, onion soup acquires its taste.

You cannot be distracted: if the onion burns, then instead of the caramel taste you will get bitterness, and nothing can be done. Even if even a small part of the entire volume of onions burns, that’s it, start preparing the soup from the beginning.

Towards the end of frying, it will become more difficult to stir the onions than at the beginning; they will begin to clump and stick together. At this stage, the main thing is to collect soot, a brown coating at the bottom of the saucepan. It must be scraped off, but not thrown away, but mixed back into the onion mass; it is these crusts that give the soup its caramel taste.

This is what the plaque at the bottom of the saucepan looks like. It forms very quickly, once a minute, so putting onions on the stove and going to watch a movie is not our option. You need to stand near the saucepan, stir the onions and scrape off the plaque. The less oil you use, the more residue there is. Scrape it off as soon as it starts to form and until the onion becomes a single sticky mass.

Add 15-20 grams of sugar and stir the onion mixture until it dissolves. The exact amount of sugar depends on what kind of onion you get: it can be neutral in taste, or it can be very, very sweet. This is another reason why it's best to taste the onions before you start cooking.

The onion that interacts with the sugar should darken. At this stage also add half the thyme and stir.

Pour 100 ml of cognac into the saucepan. You can also use dry white wine, champagne, sherry - whatever you like best. But the classic recipe calls for cognac (despite the legend about the king). Alcohol is added to the soup for greater taste and aroma: it will add a little bitterness and piquancy.

Light the cognac. We use a torch, but if you don't have one, you can throw a match into the saucepan and then pull it out. This is necessary so that the alcohol comes out of the cognac faster.

Add 1 liter of beef broth. It can be from the neck, from the bones - anything. In this case, I use oxtail broth.

The exact amount of broth is a personal choice. In theory, onion soup should be thick. If you like your spoon to sit, add less broth; if you prefer thinner soups, add more. Pour in the broth in parts, check the consistency and decide.

Theoretically, the broth could be chicken or vegetable, but all this is a departure from the classics. And, of course, you need to understand that this will be a completely different soup.

Add demi-glace to taste. We add about 100 ml (if you have rich beef broth). If the broth is weak, add more demi-glace. If you don’t have demi-glace, don’t worry, you can do without it. Its role in soup is to enhance the meat flavor. By the way, dry demi-glace is sold in stores; you can dilute it and add it to the broth.

Taste the soup and adjust to your desired taste with salt and pepper. Salt is a very delicate point. Never test food for salt if you have just drank coffee or smoked: coffee and tobacco completely confuse your taste buds, and the food seems less salty.

Bring the soup to a boil, reduce the heat and leave to simmer for about an hour, constantly watching the soup. The soup will change consistency as it cooks and you may need to add more broth.

This is the consistency an ideal onion soup should have—thick, but not overly thick. The onion in the pan does not float at the top or lie on the bottom; it is evenly distributed in the broth. The onion should be easy to chew and should not crunch on your teeth. The broth should be rich, a beautiful oak or dark amber color.

Cover the finished soup with a lid and let it steep for two to three hours. Then heat it, taste and adjust to taste with salt and pepper, if necessary.

Now the croutons. They can be made from yesterday's bread. The bread can be anything - wheat, rye, baguette or loaf. But you shouldn’t take bread with a pronounced taste, for example, Borodinsky, it will be a completely different story.

Onion soup is prepared in portions, so you need to take as many croutons as you have servings of soup. If you have a baguette or bread of small diameter, then you can put several pieces on one plate.

And also look at the plate: if it is wide, then you definitely need to take a few pieces - so that the crouton almost completely covers the soup.

Cut off the crusts and dry the bread in the oven, grill or toaster. Make sure it doesn't turn into a cracker.

Chop the chives and parsley leaves, quantity to taste.

Mix the greens with the remaining thyme, add to the soup, stir. Greens are almost always added at the end of cooking to add texture and flavor.

Traditionally, onion soup is served in tall, small-diameter dishes; our Russian pots are ideal. Pour the soup from the pan into them or into bowls.

Place the crouton on top of the soup and submerge it completely in the broth. She will still float up. It is important for us that it begins to soak in the broth from all sides.

Sprinkle each plate with grated cheese and spread it evenly over the surface of the soup. Of course, it is better to use French hard cheese, but if you don't have it, the best alternative is Gruyère.

Perhaps they started adding croutons to the soup to help the cheese from curling up in the broth. When we bake cheese on toast, the fat from it goes down into the soup, which adds flavor to it.

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Onion with sugar

Recipe 2: Cabbage Salad with Red Onion (Spicy)

A simple and very tasty salad that is prepared quickly. Perfect for a snack!

1/4 medium head of cabbage
1 medium red salad onion
2 cloves garlic 1/2 red chili pepper
a pinch of cumin
salt
olive oil
juice of a third of a lemon

I chopped the cabbage thinly, cut the onion into thin half rings, mixed in a bowl, added salt, pepper and mashed well so that the cabbage became soft and gave a little juice.

Then, in a frying pan in four tablespoons of olive oil, I lightly fried the cumin, finely chopped garlic and chili, cut into rings, for just a couple of minutes. I strained this oil from the frying pan and added it to the cabbage, also added a couple more tablespoons of olive oil, lemon juice, mixed everything and put it in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. All!

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Recipe 3: Pickled red onion salad

Red onion – 3 pcs.
sugar -1 tsp
juice of 1 lemon
a pinch of allspice

Peel the onion, cut into rings (or half rings)

Place in a bowl with a lid, add sugar and pepper.

Squeeze the lemon juice (if you have it, remove the seeds), pour over our onions and mix everything

Cover the bowl with a lid, shake well and leave for 2 hours.

The onion is ready!!! An excellent seasoning for ready-made shish kebab and other meat dishes, as well as for salads or simply as a side dish (red onion is not bitter at all and there is no unpleasant aftertaste).

How long does it take to cook onions?

Cooking onions is quick and easy. Thanks to its unique taste and aroma, it is used in a huge number of dishes.

Benefits and calorie content of onions

There are many types of onions (about 400). The most widespread vegetable is the one that produces the leaf-feather and the onion-turnip. Iran and Afghanistan are considered to be the birthplaces of onions. The Romans brought this vegetable to European countries, and they taught how to grow this crop.

Onions are a source of many beneficial substances. It contains a lot of vitamins B, C, as well as minerals, namely: calcium, manganese, copper, cobalt, zinc, fluorine, molybdenum. I would like to pay special attention to the large amount of iron that is part of the chemical composition of onions; it is also rich in potassium. These substances have a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular system.

The healing properties of onions have been known, perhaps, to everyone since childhood. This is due to the fact that this vegetable has antiseptic, antimicrobial, bactericidal, anti-inflammatory, anti-sclerotic and anti-diabetic effects. Scientists have proven that onions have the property of preventing the formation of cancer cells.

Of course, the largest amount of useful substances is contained in raw onions. But even during heat treatment, many components are still retained in the product. Therefore, it can be baked, boiled, fried, stewed with various vegetables and additives.

The calorie content of 100 g of product is 41-45 kcal. The vegetable contains absolutely no fat and has an interesting taste and aroma. For these and many other qualities, onions are widely used in cooking in all countries of the world.

Recipe 4: Tomato, Red Onion and Cheese Salad

Cream tomatoes, cut into slices - 8 pcs.
Cherry tomatoes, cut in half - 6 pcs.
Onion, red, small, thinly sliced - 1 pc.
Fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces - 1 handful
Olive oil, first cold pressed
Arugula leaves - 2 handfuls
Balsamic vinegar
Mozzarella cheese, fresh - 220 g
Salt
Ground black pepper

Place the tomatoes, onions and half the basil in a bowl. Drizzle well with olive oil, salt and pepper and stir. Place the arugula on a plate, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and season with salt and pepper. Place tomatoes, onions and basil on top of arugula. Sprinkle the red onion salad with mozzarella pieces and remaining basil. Drizzle again with olive oil and vinegar and serve the tomato and red onion salad with cheese. Bon appetit!

Recipe 5: Potato and Red Onion Salad

New potatoes 12–14 pcs.
Avocado medium 1 pc.
Lime juice 1 tsp.
Red onion 1/4 head
Apple or wine vinegar 1 tbsp. l.
Olive oil 1 tbsp. l.
Fresh thyme 3 sprigs
Salt to taste

The main ingredient of the salad is new potatoes. Cut it into small quarters and place in cold water. Wait until the water boils, then add salt, reduce the heat to medium and cook for another 15 minutes. Then drain the potatoes in a colander and cool at room temperature.

While the potatoes are cooling, cut the avocado into small pieces and place in a salad bowl.

Peel the red onion and cut into halves. Use your hands to separate the onion feathers and add them to the avocado.

Once the potatoes are cool enough, toss them with the avocado and red onion.

Now it's time to dress the salad. Add olive oil, vinegar, lime juice, salt to taste and mix well.

Garnish the finished salad with fresh thyme leaves - it will add a little spice to the salad.

The benefits and harms of boiled onions for the human body

The benefits of boiled onions depend on what is included in the composition. Thus, it is distinguished by a high content of B vitamins. As is known, their consumption helps the functioning of the nervous system. That is, those who work under stress and also experience depression can fight it with the help of a bow. It also has a beneficial effect on hematopoiesis, which makes the plant indispensable for women.

We must not forget that onions also contain vitamin C, which is used to strengthen the body’s resistance to bacteria. Therefore, during colds, a simple onion salad is often made to help the body and strengthen the immune system.

It's also worth noting that onions don't contain many calories. In its raw form, this product contains about forty calories per hundred grams. The calorie content of boiled onions is even lower - only thirty kilocalories.

Onions are often included in a variety of salads, homemade preparations for the winter, first and second courses. The beneficial properties of this product are well preserved during heat treatment.

Boiled vegetables not only replenish the supply of valuable compounds and microelements, but also alleviate the condition of many diseases and disorders in the body.

Recipe 6: salad with red onions for the winter

tomatoes – 900 g
bell pepper – 4 pcs.
red onion – 290 g
salt
ground black
granulated sugar – 0.5 cups
sunflower oil
vinegar - 1 teaspoon. spoon
spices to taste

Cut the pepper into thin strips, chop the onion finely, and cut the tomatoes into slices. Then sauté the onion in sunflower oil. Combine all ingredients, mix, add salt, pepper, spices and salt.

Boil the mixture for half an hour after boiling. At the very end of cooking, add vinegar. Place the uncooled salad in clean (sterilized) jars, close them with lids and hide them in blankets for 24 hours. Then put it in a dark place for storage.