Easy Turkish Sumac Onions Recipe (Turkish Onion Salad) (2024)

FAQs

What is Turkish sumac? ›

Sumac is a spice that is popular in the Middle East. It is related to the poisonous shrub by the same name, but the culinary variety is safe to use and easily identifiable by its vibrant red berries (poisonous sumac is white).

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.

When preparing raw onions, soak in cold water before hand to remove some of the pungency and soften the flavor. However since soaking too long will dilute the flavor, soaking in cold water for 5 to 10 minutes is recommended. Squeeze out excess water before using.

Sumac comes from the Arabic “summaq,” which means “dark red.” It is a crimson red, astringent spice popular in Middle Eastern cooking. It's made from the berry fruit of the Rhus Coriaria shrub, which were originally grown in parts of the Mediterranean basin, then spread to Europe.

People dry and powder these berries for use as an herbal medicine or culinary spice. Sumac is rich in a variety of nutrients and antioxidant compounds. Early research suggests it may be beneficial for blood sugar control and relief of exercise-induced muscle pain.

Sure, you can totally put raw onions in a salad without cooking them. Raw onions give a strong and tangy taste to salads, making them more interesting.

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.

Yellow onions are your go-to cooking onions. This onion has yellow skin and a strong flavor due to its high sulphur content, which mellows out during cooking, becoming sweet and flavorful. Its ability to hold up to heat makes it great for caramelizing and roasting.

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.

Fructans are water soluble so they leech out of onion/garlic & into the water. Removing them won't remove fructans.

Why pour boiling water over onions? ›

A simple and quick way to do that, according to chef Rick Bayless, is to pour boiling water over the chopped onions. That's pretty much all you need to know. This step makes the onions much mellower and is an easy alternative to sauteing onions in a pan for 10 minutes to take the "flame" out of them.

Onions may cause symptoms of gastrointestinal upset, such as heartburn, bloating, abdominal discomfort, nausea, and vomiting, in susceptible individuals, which may aggravate symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome in affected individuals. These symptoms are relatively more common when eating onions raw rather than cooked.

That's because onions act as a natural deodorizer, meaning they can basically absorb smells, unpleasant and otherwise. This can be especially useful if you've got a bathroom without a window or air vent.

Sumac has a fruity flavor almost like lemon. The sourness can balance the acidity of a dish.

The flavor of sumac can be likened to the tang of fresh-squeezed lemon juice; it's tart and sharp, but also contains a hint of sweetness, along with lingering floral notes. “It's a subtle tang with some fruitiness that you wouldn't get from lemon juice,” says food blogger Amina Al-Saigh.

Dried thyme and oregano make great ground sumac substitutes as they both have a similar earthy flavor profile. For a more intense flavor, you could also opt for marjoram or sesame seeds. For an even more intense flavor, you could add cumin powder or ground coriander to your mix.