Invasion of the Red Onion

I have a friend who is fiercely against cilantro, an herb I love. Then another friend who, if he could, would lead the charge against mayonnaise (something I still use in my cooking).

Other than eggplant, I don’t know if there is something that I’m so staunchly against. (And even with eggplant, I’d still eat it if it was accidentally mixed into a dish.)

But lately, I have to say, I’m starting to get annoyed by red onions — probably because people seem to be using them too often in dishes around town.

Have you noticed them? How can you not. They’re so vibrantly red-purple, for starters. What started out as a burst of color in a salad now shows up in pizzas and appetizers. It’s the parsley of this century.

I know chefs probably like to use them because red onions have the reputation of being sweeter than a normal yellow onion. And yes, there’s that color. Is it purple? Is it red? Thinly sliced, it can be quite beautiful.

But to me, it’s still an onion. And I’ve never been a fan of onion because of the odor. Sure, they’re healthy for you, but I’d rather have garlic breath over onion breath. That’s probably why you’ll often see in my recipes that I use just half an onion, and often I’d specify a sweet onion like a Vidalia or Maui onion.

The red onion is now obligatory in salads and with hamburgers. But that’s not a major issue because I’ll just pick them off my plate or keep them off my burger. When they’re cooked into the dish, then that becomes a problem.

Some of the dishes, it’d just seem wrong without red onions. For example, ceviche has to have the red onion as one of its components. When eating ceviche, I just eat around the onion pieces.

In a pizza, though, they can be tricky. Thinly sliced red onion can be found in at least one pizza option at most pizzerias. So many times I bypass a pizza because red onion is one of the ingredients, but then I feel like I’m missing out on the other things on the pizza. I end up having to make a special request to have the pizza made without the red onion, which gives me the reputation of being a picky eater.

Recently I had an amazing pizza at Dopo, but the only two ingredients for the toppings were prosciutto and red onions. So if I asked to have the pizza without the red onions, it basically would just have been prosciutto and nothing more. So I ordered it with the red onions and picked around it.

Now that I think about it, the red onion’s color is very similar to the eggplant. I knew there was another reason why I didn’t like it.

So how about you? Are you a red onion lover or, like me, am a red onion picker, picking red onions off your plate? Is it about time to call for a ban on the overuse of red onions!?