Spice Up Your Meals; Part One: Onions and Garlic

Cooking is a simple joy and a simple activity. You can create tasty and healthy meals without spending hours in the kitchen. One of the ways that you can enhance your food is to spice it up. Now this can be as easy as using a hot sauce or with a little bit extra knowledge you can select from a wide array of herbs and spices and turn even the most basic foods into a dinner delight.

There are 2 food items that will enhance your food and are not that difficult to use. Onions and garlic are the cook’s best friends. You can change a soup through the basic addition of one cooking onion or add depth to a stew or stir fry.

Garlic can turn toast into a marvelous side dish that makes pasta even better.

Onions are one of my favourite additions to our meals. They come in three colors - yellow, red, and white. Yellow onions are the most popular with about 87 percent of the crop is devoted to yellow onion production, while approximately 8 percent are red onions and 5 percent white onions.

Yellow onions have a deep flavour and are a trustworthy kitchen standby for cooking almost anything. Yellow onions turn a rich, dark brown when cooked and give French Onion Soup its tangy sweet flavor.

The red onion, with its wonderful color, is a good choice for fresh uses. Such as salads, or in grilling and char-broiling.

White onions are the traditional onion used in classic Mexican cuisine. They have a golden color and sweet flavor when sautéed. The white onion make a great sandwich with tomato and romaine lettuce, some black pepper and a touch of mustard.

Onions are a source of vitamin C, potassium, dietary fiber and folic acid. They also contain calcium, iron and have a high protein quality (ratio of mg amino acid/gram protein). Onions are low in sodium.

Where would my kitchen be without garlic? Garlic is a member of the allium genus and is the onion’s relative. It is, of course, best known as a cooking ingredient used for its wonderful taste. It would actually be better to say "tastes" plural since it can take on a completely different taste depending on how it's cooked - everything from a subtle sweet flavour to a strong almost overpowering one.

The two videos will help you make the most of these two wonderful foods.