A New-to-Me Onion

[Shel_B]

While perusing the bins and the shelves this morning at the Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley, where groceries and produce are sold alongside the fish, a bin with a vaiety of unknown-to-me Japanese onions caught my attention.  I'd not seen them before, but it's not often that I look through the produce section of this store.

 

I grabbed a package of Negi onions. There are several varieties of these onions, and I believe these are the  Naganegi variety. There's a page that describes these onions, but have only quickly scanned it, perhaps read more tonight: https://sudachirecipes.com/negi/#Types_of_Negi_Used_in_Japan

 

The plan for this weekend is to make Shoyu Chicken, and perhaps these onions will be used.

 

 

 

 

[liuzhou]

They're usually called Welsh onions in English. Allium fistulosum- and native to China. Negi (ネギ) just means 'green onion'. Naganegi (長葱) means ' long onion'.

 

Very common here, all over Asia and in the UK. Probably everywhere. 

Edited yesterday at 03:21 AM by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

I get them at my local H-Mart which calls them "Korean Leeks"

[AlaMoi]

scallions

spring onion

green onion

salad onion

chibols

sybows

.

.

.

they get around a lot!

[liuzhou]

11 hours ago, KennethT said:

I get them at my local H-Mart which calls them "Korean Leeks"

 

Yes. In Mandarin Chinese, they are 大葱 (dà cōng), literally 'big onion' but often translated as leeks. They are also known as Japanese leeks.

As a kid growing up in East Scotland* they were known as sybows but pronounced sybies in my local dialect. 

 

The history of the names is interesting. First known reference and from 1362  is as 'chibols'. This is derived from a Northern French dialect name, chiboule. The Scots sybow was a 16th century adaptation of chibol.

 

* Wikipedia claims incorrectly that this name is from the west of Scotland. No, it ain't. In the west of Scotland they are referred to as 'spring onions'. There are many other names used in different places.

 

 

 

Edited 16 hours ago by liuzhou (log)