Easy Turkish Sumac Onions Recipe (Turkish Onion Salad) (2024)

FAQs

What are sumac onions? ›

What are sumac onions? Turkish sumac onions are sliced red onions marinated in sumac, along with oil and something acidic, in this case red wine vinegar. This softens the taste and texture of the onions. They are served in the Middle East as a side dish or condiment.

This easy popular Turkish salad called piyaz, or more accurately fasulye piayzi, is made with simple ingredients including white beans, tomatoes, onions, parsley and garlic. A light vinaigrette with fresh lemon juice and a good dash of sumac brings this satisfying white bean salad together. Ready in 10 minutes or less.

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.

Reducing the Smell

Luckily, making raw onions less pungent is as easy as 1-2-3: Cut the onion as you want it in the final dish—chopped, sliced, or minced. Put the pieces in a colander and rinse them under cool running water. Spread rinsed raw onions on a clean kitchen towel or layers of paper towels and pat dry.

What does sumac taste like? It tastes somewhat like fresh lemon juice – a bit sour and astringent! But it's much more complex and nuanced in flavor. Sumac is tangy and deep with a hint of earthy sweetness and floral citrus notes.

Sumac (pronounced SOO-mak) is the fruit of a shrub (Rhus coriaria) that grows throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean. These berries vary in colour from brick red to dark purple, depending on where the shrub is grown. Berries are harvested just before they ripen, then left in the sun to dry.

Common ingredients used in Turkish cooking include lamb, beef, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, and various herbs and spices such as parsley, mint, cumin, and sumac.

Key ingredients

Frequently used ingredients in Turkish specialties include lamb, chicken, beef, fish, rice, eggplants, green peppers, onions, garlic, lentils, beans, zucchinis, chickpeas and tomatoes.

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.

What is the healthiest onion to eat? ›

Red onions

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.

Vidalia, Walla Walla, Cipollini varieties are inherently sweet onions. These varieties have become extremely popular and for good reason. They are good cooked but they are very mild and are excellent eaten raw. These varieties of onion have a thinner husk and therefore don't store as well as wintering onions.

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.

Onions - soaking in cold water to soften the flavor

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.

Sumac is the dark red powder, which finds its way onto nearly every plate, giving it a hint of beautifully perfumed tartness. It functions the same way a squirt of lemon would to finish off a dish.

Is sumac spicy? Sumac isn't spicy like a chilli powder or hot paprika. It has a sour, floral tang that's a bit like lemon or limes but isn't quite as astringent.

Rhus aromatica, or “fragrant sumac,” is the rarest of the three North American varieties. Known for releasing a strong lemon scent when its leaves and twigs are bruised, its tart berries are also commonly used to create beverages and were a common source of dye and tobacco flavoring for the Cheyenne people.

The red berries are edible and have a wonderful lemon-y flavor. You can find the red spice made from sumac's dried, crushed berries in Middle Eastern markets where it is a staple in that cuisine. Sumac spice is wonderful in marinades for chicken and kebab or in salad dressings.