Yellow Onions

The yellow onion is the all-purpose onion used in kitchens and restaurants across the nation. As a key ingredient of so many dishes, yellow onions are an important crop worldwide. During the winter, storage yellow onions have a brown appearance and are covered with a thin papery skin while spring and summer onions are lighter in appearance and often times have no papery skin on them. Yellow onions are usually firm and heavy and have a pungent flavor and smell that will ironically bring a tear to your eye. The strong complex flavor of the yellow onion makes it the preferred choice for onion rings, French onion soup, and Bloomin’ onion recipes.

White Onions

White onions have a pure white skin and flesh and a unique mild and sweet flavor that is desirable in many dishes, with salsa being one of the most high profile. White onions sauté to a beautiful golden brown and provide an almost sweet & sour compliment to food. White onions are also served raw with many sandwiches. The white onion is more challenging to grow and store than other varieties as its snow white skin really intensifies any blemishes. Greening at the start of the season and black discoloration at the end of the season are commonly seen defects. About 5% of the US crop is white onions.

Red Onions

The red onion is often referred to as a salad onion or a purple onion. The purplish-red skin is loaded with anthocyanins and flavonoids, antioxidants which give them their color. The red onion has a much milder and sometimes even sweet flavor as compared to the yellow onion, thus making it more adaptable in dishes that use uncooked onions. Red and yellow onions are one of the best natural sources of quercetin, a bioflavonoid that is particularly well suited for scavenging free radicals. Red onions will lose their amazing color when cooked, but still remain great tasting. About 10% of the US annual crop is made up of red onions.