Care & Handling

Varieties
Yellow: Hot-flavored, heat will not vary with size. Good for cooking in any heated dish where subtlety is not an issue. Boilers are excellent for baking, roasting, stewing and boiling.

Red: Sharp,sweet, pungent. Uncooked reds are great additions to salads. When cooked, will lose their red hue.

White: Hot-flavored; sharper, cleaner flavored than whites. Good for cooking in any heated dish; most commonly used in Mexican cuisine. First taste is sweet, then sulfur flavors kick in. Boilers are good for baking, roasting, stewing, pickling and boiling.

Availability
Green Giant Fresh Onions are available year round.

Selection
Good yellow onions should be unblemished, firm to hard, free of cuts and bruises, short, dry necks, papery outer skins.

Good red onions are somewhat crisper and more perishable than storage onion. Coarser-textured with thick wrapper skins. Should have dry necks and be unblemished.

Good white onions should be unblemished; firm to hard; free of cuts and bruises; with short, dry necks and papery outer skins.

Storage
Spring/summer (fresh) onions are fresh onions. They are more delicate than storage onions and will not keep as long. They should be stored in a well-ventilated, cool dry place, or refrigerated for a short period, to sustain their quality.

Storage onions are much easier to keep. They can be kept for weeks, or even months, in a cool, dry well-ventilated place, without loss of vitamins or minerals. Don't store them in a sack though; separating onions by storing them in a single layer will ensure a longer storage life.

Avoid sunlight as it can cause green sun spots. Onions will freeze at 30.6 F.

Preparation
Onions are more versatile in their impact on a dish than almost any other vegetable. They can be used both as a vegetable and as a flavoring; they can sweeten a dish, or heat up a dish. They can either be eaten raw or cooked. They can be braised, boiled, steamed, baked, sautéed, scalloped, fried or grilled. Sautéing onions softens their texture and intensifies their flavor while lessening their bite, as does most other cooking methods.

Variations in their preparation can change their impact on any dish. Take, for example, a hamburger with onions. A raw, diced storage onion can be added to the raw hamburger patty. The resulting patty will have more texture, and the onion flavor will be sharper, than if the diced onion was first sauteed. Using a yellow storage onion rather than a white will result in a softer flavor. Using a sweet onion would vary this even further. Or you could change the impact by sautéing onion rings until soft; then putting them on top of the hamburger patty. In this version, both yellow and white storage onions would taste sweeter and less pungent. As you can see, the possibilities are numerous.

Be sure to use very sharp, high-carbon stainless-steel knives in handling onions. Pure carbon steel will tend to discolor the onions.