Pea Salad Recipe with Red Onions and Cheese {Video} (2024)

FAQs

Can you put raw red onions in a salad? ›

Yes, You Can Put Raw Onions in Your Salad.

Pea salad is a classic American side dish that's as colorful as it is delicious! It's packed with bright green peas, red onion, cheddar cheese, and bacon. Then, all of those ingredients are tossed with a dressing made from sour cream, mayonnaise, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and a little pinch of sugar.

Red onions vary greatly in their pungency, but the rinsing technique works great with them. You can even soak them in cold water for a bit before rinsing them to pull out more of their pungency and further soften their flavor.

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.

Red onions are particularly good raw in many of the same places as their white cousins. Red onions work well in salads and guacamole, or on a juicy burger, in part because of their vivid color.

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.

Pea greens, the young and tender pea vines you may find piled high in tangled bundles at the farmers' market, can be eaten cooked or raw.

Per ½ cup serving: 144 calories; 6.8g total fat (3.1g saturated, 0.1g polyunsaturated, 0.0g monounsaturated); 277mg sodium; 11.9mg cholesterol; 11.6g carbohydrate; 4.0g fiber; 4.1g sugars; 10g protein; 237.4mg potassium.

Peas are a good source of vitamins C and E, zinc, and other antioxidants that strengthen your immune system. Other nutrients, such as vitamins A and B and coumestrol, help reduce inflammation and lower your risk of chronic conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis.

Submerging them in cold water takes away that intense, sharp bite from the raw onion. The cold water helps the enzyme that causes onions to have their pungent flavor to leach out. Similarly, storing onions in the refrigerator will help mellow them out when you go to use them.

How do you make red onions taste better? ›

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.

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.

All types of onions are good for you, but this dark reddish-purple variety, sometimes called purple onion, has especially high levels of quercetin and other helpful plant compounds known as flavonoids. Flavonoids give many fruits, vegetables, and flowers their colors.

White onions are probably the strongest-tasting onion on this list. They're typically used in Asian and Mexican dishes, as well as potato and macaroni salads. You can also sauté them, making them ideal for French onion soup or any other food in which you want to add sweet or sour flavor.

Adding raw onions to your salad in summer can offer a variety of health benefits due to their rich nutrient profile and unique compounds.

You should eat onions raw rather than cooked to get the most sulfur compounds from them. Both quercetin and organic sulfur compounds found in onions are known to boost insulin production, making them a helpful vegetable choice if you have diabetes.

Eating onions may help regulate blood sugar levels, which is significant for people with diabetes or prediabetes. A small 2010 study in 84 people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes found that eating 100 g of raw red onion significantly reduced fasting blood sugar levels after 4 hours.

Yes, raw red onions offer several health benefits. They are rich in antioxidants, particularly quercetin, which may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. Red onions also contain vitamins C and B6, fiber, and folate.

These onions are colorful and spicy-to-mild flavor. Because of their bright color and crispy texture, they're great for salads, salsas, and other fresh recipes. They're also excellent sliced for sandwiches.