Grated or pureed onions in marinades and cooking sauces

[heidih]

Lately I have been playing with including an onion into the food processor when I assemble a marinade or cooking sauce with happy results. Years ago I recall a recipe that asked me to grate and squeeze the juice from the onion and use it in a kebab type of marinade for beef as I recall. I had an abundance of juicy onions and decided to use one in my chicken marinade during the Grilled Chicken Cook-Off and used the method again today with some baked tuna. The resulting sauce has a nice texture that is great over rice or any starch. Actually I was just spooning it up as a treat.

Is this a more common method than I am aware of? I will be playing around with it in other variations.

[Dave the Cook]

Well, there's soubise, a classic French sauce that combines onion puree with bechamel (I think that's right).

In Cookwise, Corriher uses pureed shallots to thicken a sauce, but I can't remember which one, and my copy of the book is sequestered behind an antique sideboard and the rear seats from a 1985 BMW.

Finally, I made a curry the other night that called for tossing onion quarters, yogurt and a buttload of spices into a blender and running it until everything was smooth.

[heidih]

Yes Dave - I can see this clearly in a curry application.

[vice]

I tend to associate pureed onions with pork marinades, off the top of my head the pork vendaloo in Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking and Bittman's take on pernil from a few years back.

[ScottyBoy]

Grated onions are classic in Korean short rib marinade as well.

[Blether]

Yes, I use grated onion often enough in Indian dishes - kebab marinades as well as curries. I wouldn't replace the garlic in tandoori chicken, but in other recipes., onion in place of (all / most of) the garlic can be a nice change.

I also like a salad dressing of oil, grated onion, and soy or ponzu (a formula poached from one of our local Italian restaurants).

[heidih]

I also like a salad dressing of oil, grated onion, and soy or ponzu (a formula poached from one of our local Italian restaurants).

Can you give us an idea of the proportions? This sounds like a simple thing to try and experiment with.

[Blether]

Well, taste as you mix, of course: but maybe start with 6T oil, 1T grated onion, 1-2t soy or ponzu (or use 50/50 soy & lemon juice - the chef told me it was soy, but I've slipped into using ponzu for a bit more tang). Also peanut oil is the closest I've found to the restaurant's version - certainly not olive oil, and canola wasn't right either.

I know some people like a sour salad dressing. I'm not so keen. 3:1 might be correct for an emulsion, but as I'm eating the salad rather than weatherproofing it, I use a good bit less acid, even in vinaigrette.

Edited August 31, 2010 by Blether (log)

[Doodad]

I have seen that used in bbq sauces.

[budrichard]

I use my food processor to both puree with the blade attachment and grate with the grater attachment. The puree goes into products where I have no concern over the liquid such as the mentioned BBQ sauce. If grated, I squeeze out the juice for use in preparations such as a pate where you want to minimize the liquid content for the pate to set up or hold together if just a molded terrine.-Dick