EVERY so often, my wife gets irritated with me, tells me to get off my hobby horses such as global warming and write a column on a good fruit or vegetable.
I have done this before, specifically on potatoes and carrots, but I thought this was a good opportunity to look at another one, namely onions.
I started by getting some background from Christine Ingram's The Vegetable Encyclopedia and Cookbook.
Here's what she says: "Onions, along with shallots, leeks, chives and garlic, belong to the Allium family which, including wild varieties, has some 325 members (700 if you believe Botanica's '500 popular vegetables, herbs, fruit and nuts')."
"There are references to onions in the Bible and it was widely eaten in Egypt... by the Middle Ages, onions were a common vegetable throughout Europe and would have been used in soups, stews and sauces when strong flavouring was preferred."
Those hundreds of varieties range in size from 10cm to 1500cm.
Plenty of bonuses
APART from enjoying eating them, onions also can act as an antiseptic and are beneficial in helping treat asthma, bronchitis, coughs and colds.
This is one of the 10 benefits you will get from using them - here are the others:
- Good oral health: This prevents tooth decay.
- Treatment for heart ailments: This helps to thin the blood and hence prevents the red blood cells from clotting.
- Acne removal: Just mix the juice with honey or olive oil and smear this on.
- Reducing insect bite reactions: Smear on after honeybee bites and scorpion stings.
- Boosting sexual drive: Taking a tablespoon of onion juice and of ginger juice apparently does this. (The sceptical scientist in me wonders if it's the ginger juice).
- Relieving stomach ache: This will be reduced by the onion's various anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial molecules.
- Cancer prevention: Onions have many active compounds which do this.
- Urinary disorder treatment: Boil 7 grams of onion in a glass of water. Drinking this will provide considerable relief if you suffer from a burning sensation when you urinate.
- Relieving ear ache: A few drops of juice applied with cotton wool may actually prove immensely beneficial if you suffer from this.
Tasmania produces onions of exceptional quality.
They are worth $45 million annually - this is 22pc of the national total, and 37pc are exported. It helps that they store particularly well.
Moving on, let's have a look at pickled onions which, according to an article in Tasmanian Country on June 21, 2022, is one of Tasmania's most iconic pickled goods.
They come from the Blue Banner factory in Ulverstone which I drive past every day.
This has a team hand cutting, sorting and bottling the onions. A family secret vinegar is then added and the lids put on the jars.
It's quite a job.
Three tonnes of onions a day, amounting to up to 5000 jars, each containing 11 or 12 onions.
"The vinegar recipe goes back over 30 years and hasn't really changed in that time, that in itself is a testimony of our product," the company says.
Another example of Tasmanian quality products.
- Dr Walker welcomes feedback, questions and comments. E-mail him: JudiandMikeWalker@outlook.com
