Red or White or Yellow

[Monica Bhide]

Which type of onion do you use when you cook Indian food?

Is there one you have preference for?

Why?

[Sleepy_Dragon]

I only avoid the red ones because they sting my eyes the most by far. But if I want bhelpuri (the snack, as opposed to our poster here!), then I'll put up with the tears.

Pat

[whippy]

both julie sahni and malvi doshi go to pains to explain that onions grown in india have less moisture than onions grown in america. they advise ways to treat the american onion differently.

[mongo_jones]

growing up in india i don't recall seeing anything but red onions. that's predominantly what i use. i certainly never use white onions. don't even know what they taste like.

[Episure]

The red in cooking and the white for raw consumption.

Then we have the small sambhar onion(shallot) which is a must in south indian cuisine and as a pickle.

[rajsuman]

For years after I moved to Ireland, I used to long for the pinkish-red Indian onion. Nothing I cooked with the yellow onion commonly used here tasted like it did back home. I couldn't puree/process the onion raw because that made it taste so bitter. I got around the problem by using hand-chopped onions and boiled onion paste. The red onions were available, but they were either too expensive or had layers too thick. Now the situation is much better, red onions are good price-wise as well as quality-wise (even though they do not compare with the Indian onions). These days I use yellow onions for cooking (funny how you get used to things, now I find red onion when cooked spoils the colour of the dish) and red for salads, raitas etc. Don't use white onions at all. I do sometimes get shallots to make sambhar or chutney.

Suman

[scott123]

both julie sahni and malvi doshi go to pains to explain that onions grown in india have less moisture than onions grown in america.  they advise ways to treat the american onion differently.

My onions have been especially juicy lately. I've been trying to counteract this by dicing the onions and then laying them out on a single layer for a few hours to dry a bit. Seems to work nicely.

I choose onions not by color but by pungency. If it doesn't make me cry, I don't want it. Vidalia, Maui, and all those 'tasteless' sweet onions... you can keep 'em!

[Modern Day Hermit]

Red is a must in my pantry for Indian cooking. IMO, it provides the best results.

[tryska]

yellow for cooking, red for raw.

[bong]

Red for raw. Usually, I use the white for cooking. Sometimes I use shallots for cooking. But shallots need too much work.

My wife however likes to cook with the red, not the white.

And yes, the onions in India are significantly (in size as well as in taste) from the ones here in the USA.