Pea Salad Recipe with Red Onions and Cheese {Video} (2024)

FAQs

Can you put raw red onions in a salad? ›

If you love the crunch and flavor of raw red onions on your grilled burgers and leafy green salads, but avoid them for their rather pungent and lingering aftertaste, then this one tip might change your whole summer. All you need to do is give the sliced onions a good soak in a bowl of water before serving 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.

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.

Frozen peas are great, and here's what I do: I let them thaw for just a bit at room temperature, but I don't let them go all the way. You want them to stay nice and cold and firm so they don't freak out and get mushy when you mix the salad together.

Submerge Them in Cold Water

Soak them for at least 15 minutes (longer is even more beneficial), properly drain, and eat away! 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.

You should eat onions raw rather than cooked to get the most sulfur compounds from them. Both quercetin and organic sulfur compounds found in onions are known to boost insulin production, making them a helpful vegetable choice if you have diabetes.

When preparing raw onions, soak in cold water before hand to remove some of the pungency and soften the flavor.

Then you just have to wait long enough for the vinegar to do its job, rinsing away the harsh sulfurous compounds, softening the onion, and giving it a pleasantly tart pop of flavor. If you use red wine vinegar, my personal favorite, the onions also turn an amazing hot-pink color.

To slice an onion to be used raw in a salad or a sandwich, you can halve it and then cut it crosswise, for pretty, half moon shapes. Keep the onion whole and slice it crosswise for onion rings.

Red and yellow onions are richer in antioxidants than other types. In fact, yellow onions may contain almost 11 times more antioxidants than white onions ( 25 ). Cooking can significantly reduce levels of some antioxidants ( 26 ).

What is the best onion to eat raw? ›

Basically, if you're going to eat an onion raw, the white onion is what you want to reach for. And while they're pretty mild on their own, you can further tame their flame by slicing one thinly and giving it an hour-long soak in cold water—they'll be so sweet, you can practically eat them like a salad.

Red onions vary greatly in their pungency, but the rinsing technique works great with them. You can even soak them in cold water for a bit before rinsing them to pull out more of their pungency and further soften their flavor.

Don't Eat the Frozen Peas (unless they were cooked first!)

Did you know that if a commercially prepared product that is frozen has instructions for cooking, that you cannot use them without cooking them first (and then cooling before adding)?

When you freeze fruits and vegetables you actually are freezing the water in the plant cells. When the water freezes, it expands and the ice crystals cause the cell walls to rupture. So the texture of thawed produce is much softer than when it was raw.

So, good news: when you're prepping your ingredients for a delicious pea recipe, there is no need to defrost. You can cook them straight from frozen. We insist on one thing though: don't refreeze after defrosting, they won't quite be the same.

Just like yellow onions, it can be sauteed, stir-fried, simmered, and yes, even caramelized. The main difference is that the red onion will lose some of its characteristic flavor when cooked versus when eaten raw. Red onions deliver a milder onion flavor to dishes when cooked while still giving a dish color.

Raw onions are an excellent source of vitamin C, which aids in enhancing the body's immunity. Vitamin C assists in generating white blood cells that defend the body against bacteria and viruses, making raw onions essential in preventing common ailments like the cold and flu.

Keep storage onions in a cool, dark, and dry place. Moisture and light lead to mold (ew) and sprouting (annoying, though not a deal-breaker), so stow your storage onions (red, yellow, and white as well as shallots and the diminutive pearl and cippoline) in a dry, well-ventilated basket, bin, or large bowl.