Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Should they be sliced 1/4" thick, paper thin or somewhere in between? I prefer paper thin on a salad.

Mandoline thin! Otherwise there's too much bite.

Depends on the application but I frequently cut them as thin as the sharpest knife in the drawer can handle.

Red onion slices are a good candidate for soaking in 1T of baking soda per cup of water for the 15 minutes necessary to neutralize sulfenic acid and reduce harshness.

Toning Down Raw Onion’s Bite

I love red onion and prefer them chopped.
fitzie

Raw in a garden-style salad I prefer them paper thin, usually with an Usuba but sometimes my Kyocera mandolin too which excels at that kind of thing. You can also blanch them lightly to mellow the taste, but we usually stick to raw.

In something chunkier with cheese (like greek style salad), I'd put the in chopped.

My vote is for them to be absent. But then I learned to cook specifically because I have a weird thing about onions unless they are either microscopic or caramelized.

It totally depends on who's eating them, what kind of salad and what it's pared with.
Most store-bought are somewhat dry and strong.
Some that are young, fresh and juicy can be milder.
Since most are strong, and green salads in general are mild, I'd do thin and just a couple.
They do add color, but so do tomatoes.

If the salad is spicy and bold, or you want to be left alone, then go thicker.

Oh golly, I just cut them up willy nilly. The salsa recipe I use has you put them in a sieve and run hot water over them to take out some of the bite and that does seem to work.

Mary

For me it depends on the onion....mostly, I like them thinly sliced, but they can overwhelm a salad if they are too strong. But in a salad, like a Greek salad, they are necessary and should be a little thicker. Thanks for the tips on how tame them.

Ilene,

Another taming tip: toss the red onions with a little wine vinegar (like 1-2tsp) and leave them to sit in the fridge for at least an hour or better overnight. This will sweeten them considerably.