Onions are Mother Nature’s flavor enhancer. Most people take these bulb vegetables for granted, not realizing how much they can impact the flavor of a dish. When added to a salad in raw form, they have a delightful pungent flavor. And when cooked they become deliciously sweet. To make them the sweetest they can be, sauté them until they are soft and brown, as in this recipe.
Not only can they make any dish more flavorful, but they have many medicinal properties. They can help lower cholesterol, improve kidney function, and even help remove heavy metals and parasites from your body. Having a 90% water content, they have diuretic properties. Also containing high anti-inflammatory properties, onions help break down high fat foods to make them more digestible. Plus, onions contain Vitamins A, B complex, and C.
In the summer, grilling the onions is a great way to enjoy them. Also, stuffing them and then cooking them over an open fire will give you a wonderful dish. This soup recipe is one of the most popular in my cookbook. Using the olive oil and tamari to sauté the onions first, until soft and browned, will give this soup the taste like traditional French Onion Soup.
French Onion Soup
6 cups water
2 large onions (diced)
1 T. olive oil
4 T. tamari
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. basil
In a soup pot, sauté the onions in the 1 T. olive oil and a dash of tamari. Saute the onion until they are very soft and brown. The longer you sauté the onions the better the flavor of your soup. Add the water, bring up to a boil. Reduce to simmer, cover and cook 15 minutes. Add the tamari, sea salt and basil. Serve warm with some whole grain bread.
Valerie Wilson
Recipe from her cookbook ‘Perceptions In Healthy Cooking’.
www.macroval.com
