Onions are a versatile food that can be found fresh, frozen, canned, caramelized, pickled, and chopped. They’re even dried and made into products like kibbled slices, rings, minced onions, granules, and powder.
Onion powder is especially popular. It’s made from dried and ground onions and has a strong smell. When you don’t have fresh onions, it’s a great choice. Onion powder lasts a long time on the shelf because it’s dried and comes in colors like yellow, red, and white.
People around the world cook with onions because of their unique, strong taste. Some might think onions are veggies, but they are actually a type of bulb. Bulbs are like underground stems that act like food storage, helping the plant survive winter and grow again in spring. Onions have layers that are really just modified leaves to store food.
Scientifically, onions are considered a fruit because they’ve got seeds. But they’re not sweet like most fruits, and we don’t normally eat them for dessert. Instead, onions are used to add flavor to savory dishes like soups, stews, and more. They’re a must-have in the kitchen, just like carrots, potatoes, and celery. For cooking, onions are thought of as a vegetable.
Some say onions should be called fruit since they have seeds. But this idea doesn’t really fit with how we use them in cooking.
In botany, a fruit is an edible plant part with seeds, while vegetables are any edible parts that don’t have seeds. Even though onions have seeds, in the kitchen, we usually treat them like vegetables because that fits better with how we eat them.
The seeds in onions aren’t like typical fruit seeds. They’re small, hard, and don’t taste very good or give much nutrition. So, onions might be technically fruits, but for cooking, it’s better to treat them as vegetables. That’s mainly how we see them and use them in food.
Onions vary in color, texture, and taste, with some being sweet and others more intense.
- White onions, which have a mild and slightly sweet taste, are often the top choice.
- Yellow onions are the go-to for French cooking because they’re a bit sweeter and have more flavor than white onions.
- For their mild and sweet taste, red onions are another favorite choice.
Onions are incredibly adaptable. You can use them in a bunch of ways, like a foundation for soups and stews, and they’re good grilled, roasted, or lightly cooked on their own. On top of being tasty, onions are healthy—they have vitamin C, folate, and potassium in them.
Final Thoughts
So, even though onions have seeds, which makes them technically fruits, we usually think of them as vegetables. This is mostly because of how they taste and how they’re used in cooking.
