Others that also have an aversion to onions, when is it OK?
Me and my friends are going to eat at an Indian restaurant, not our first time, but I seem to be the only one who outright hates onions, others either like it or find it ok, while I'm firmly in the "Only correct amount of onion in food is no onion".
I know some Indian dishes like Curry or Masala have onion in them, but they are well masked, so I can't detect them.
In salads, even small amounts is bad, If I eat one and don't notice it with my eyes, the first reaction often is feeling the "smell" or odor spread through every pore in my mouth, quickly rising to my "bad" eye, making it tear or feel weird, then I start to smell it and taste it. So raw onions are a no go.
Caramelized onions are not much better, their slimy texture is gross and the taste masks everything and taste/odor sticks to the mouth.
But when is finely diced and thoroughly cooked like on some dishes that uses them in mined meat or chicken, can work, but it can be detected if they are large enough. But at that point why have it?
Onion rings are also inedible.
It feels tempting at times to just say I'm allergic, but I have never done that.
It's not an allium thing , I like garlic.
Chives/Leeks/Green Onions/Scallions taste distinctly of onion, but they aren't as foul. But using them in excess makes them closer to normal onions. But I like them when used in cheesy fries with other toppings as well.
I'm curious, do other people who strongly hate onions and may or may not have been on r/onionhate before, have that threshold where it is OK? Or is it full dislike?
...my wife absolutely hated onions when we first started dating, but she's totally fine with them now, twenty-five years later; maybe it's one of those palate-changing-with-age things?..
One more vote for palate change with age. I didn't use to eat anything in the allium family, plus many many other aversions and would sit at the table for as long as it took to seperate out the tiniest pieces. If it's further mixed in then I'd just starve. I was very underweight as a child and the pediatrician basically told my parents to stop fighting it and just make foods I would eat. Now I cook with them and gladly accept the rejected alliums + cilantro from my kid's pho.
@Nihilego : do you happen to be neurodiverse as well?
I think the best way I can say it is.
"Very likely but can't back it up confirm yes or no".
I doubt the change with age part, but I don't know what'll happen in 20 years I guess, but as a zillenial/Late Gen-Z I think my tastes may have formed already.
But yeah I'd probably still choose to starve instead of eating something that distinctly tastes of onion, or eat the minimum I tolerate.
Got it, suspected but difficult to confirm as adult. Haha wouldn't it be funny if one day they use the aversion as part of diagnostics because we can detect toxins better or something?
If you cook your own foods, that's mostly when I made the switch for different foods becoming okay: onions are in so many recipes and are so cheap. They also chemically do interesting things to food textures so not an easy one to skip either.
Anyway I also see no harm in avoiding them forever >:} the plant family clearly doesn't want to be eaten.
I wouldn't be so sure. There's some things I didn't start liking at all until i was in my 30s, some things that I don't like much anymore, and a couple things I loved and later developed allergies. I wouldn't be surprised if they change again as I get older. Tastes and bodies are weird.
I couldn't stand even the smell of coffee until I was 30. Now I grind my own beans and drink a cup of black every morning.
Was it a slow move towards Black or how did you get into it?
I love the smell of coffee but I'm still on baby steps towards it: limited to the rare iced coffee with 3 cream 1 sugar , mocha, and coffee flavoured cakes.
I also started enjoying coffee in my 30s. I can't speak to @PraiseTheSoup's journey, but mine was having two kids under 2 at the time, and the local coffee in southeast asia being like two thirds coffee (high-caffeine robusta), one third condensed milk and evaporated milk, and a scoop or two of sugar. That jet fuel kept me alive. After drinking it near daily for long enough, I started to actually notice the flavor other than SWEET, and from there tried more coffees. I still prefer tea as my daily hot beverage now that I can sleep again, but I do enjoy a nice coffee if we're out for brunch on the weekend.
I myself only recently started to actually drink coffee and not hate it.
Black Coffee is the worst coffee imo, I prefer drip coffee, but I can drink black coffee no problems, I do prefer sweeter lattes/mocha/etc, and I'm more of a tea person, but I'm not as picky as I were in regards to coffee.
I'm using it occasionally as a stimulant* and the sweetness is mandatory at this point because otherwise bleh. Probably long term exposure desensitizes to the bitterness then, good data point.
ironically, recently discovered common stimulants don't work for me very well, via pharmacogenetics testing. So maybe only placebo effect at play
I'd say it happened over the course of 2-3 years.
It was initially a regional chain, Caribou Coffee, that got me started. Specifically the white chocolate mocha (iced) was all I drank at first. Lots of creaminess and sweetness.
Then I started trying to replicate that at home to save money, went through a cold brew phase and all the different preparation methods. I think I ended up on black out of pure laziness. Making fancy coffee takes too much effort to do it every morning before heading out for work. I'd still prefer cold coffee every day of the year, even in the winter when it's -20°F, but I'm too lazy for that even.
I'm like you - I can't do onions, especially if they're raw. For me, onions are a dual threat - the flavour of raw onions is so overpowering that a single stray speck of it will "pollute" anything else I'm eating - I will taste nothing but onions all day, regardless of what else I eat or what kind of mouthwash I try to use to get rid of it. It's immensely frustrating. Even if an onion has been touching food and then removed, it's strong enough for that reaction for me - it doesn't have to be present anymore for it to be a problem. The texture of onions is also gross for me, especially when they're in the floppy cooked stage. The way I've dealt with onions in my food is 1) avoid them like the plague or 2) dice them finely and caramelize them, especially with a lot of butter. My family had a few dishes which basically caramelize onions into a butter soup before adding them to food, and if I can't tell they're part of a meal, it's ok (although I still feel a bit of unease about it).
I'm not sure of your palate situation, but I'm pretty certain that I'm a supertaster. For anyone not familiar, I taste food differently from what is "normal". To be totally honest, it sucks. The balance of flavours is off - things with onions or peppers get overwhelmed easily by those flavours, and so what I taste is not what is intended by the chef. Things with a lot of flavours (like a seven topping pizza) also become so complex that my brain interprets it as "this is a disgusting mess". I don't know any other way to describe it. There are other flavours that I'm more sensitive to, like bitter and "fatty" flavours, which can become overwhelming (I can't eat much of them before needing to stop). On the other hand, I can appreciate really subtle flavours, like different kinds of rice or breads with a bit of oil and herbs. By and large, though, I find that a lot of foods contain items that my brain and body do not consider "good food", and so I have to be exceedingly careful where I eat and what I order.
I have been accused by a lot of different adults of being "picky", including the hilarious "have you tried harder to eat food that is gross to you?". I, in fact, have! Once I was able to cook for myself, I could combine different foods and ingredients into more complex dishes, but I kind of had to explore the "food space" for myself. My palate is so weird that I kind of have to test each new combination out myself, and if someone throws in a "secret ingredient", it can be a nasty surprise. This has caused me a great deal of food anxiety - I have been at dinner parties and eaten something I thought was ok, accidentally started eating something not compatible, and have had to discreetly find a way to discard it into a napkin without puking. Because that's the other fun side of my food aversions - if my brain thinks what I'm eating is "not food", I have an intense gag/puke reaction. What fun!
For anyone convinced that picky eaters just aren't trying, that is not my experience - it is an ongoing, neverending process, and being "adventurous" often ends up with me feeling gross or unable to enjoy my food. It is not fun. It's primarily just stressful, not to mention stigmatizing. I don't get why people feel so strongly about what other people eat, but I do my best to try not to eat around people I don't know very often. So for you, fellow onion not-enjoyer, I see you, and I hear you. Onions are usually gross and I don't want them anywhere near my food.
Interesting -- as a supertaster, do you try to eat more meals of "single/few ingredient" type foods? Because you can much better appreciate say, single udder butter, sake from different year of rice cultivar, a particularly good soy sauce, and your aforementioned rice + oils + breads. Maybe something simple like a freshly caught mackerel + sea salt, served with plain Japanese rice, would be by themselves a fantastic meal for you. Or a quality slow rise sour dough bread + slice of vine ripened tomato. Coastal cuisines like Cantonese, Japanese, Sicilian probably work best for you?
I imagine casseroles are on the opposite end of that spectrum huh.
I'm just here, curious why people dislike onions.
That being said, I have the same loud reaction against peanut butter (even the smell makes me gag) and shrimp (texture).
Same as you: there's a distinct sharpness to the taste and sometimes a texture component. Fresh chives for example has a slimy coating inside / where they're cut. The allium family is famous for making people cry -- I suspect some of us are more susceptible to that irritant chemical even with some heat and in small doses. When it's super cooked down and spread throughout say a curry, it's less noticeable
Do you also dislike peanuts, or just peanut butter? I assume the smell and flavor is close enough that whole peanuts would also be a problem.
Shrimp makes sense, I immediately imagined the feeling of biting into one and can easily see how that would be offputting. It doesn't bother me, but there's a distinct pop when you break the skin.
Shrimp is an interesting one because their texture can range from crisp to mush to leathery depending on preparation. I LOVE the umami of all seafood but even then some preparations I can't stand. For a while I refused to eat prawns at Chinese restaurants because they add baking soda (?) or baking powder (?) to make them have that abnormal crispness and I hate it. I also still do not eat amaebi (raw small sweet prawn) sushi/sashimi because the buttery texture just feels like slime to me. Now if shrimp was dried thoroughly, it's just an umami bomb snack I could eat like beef jerky, yum. Improperly cooked shrimp has a powdery mush format that resembles wet biscuit.
@Hobofarmer which shrimp texture do you not enjoy?
Any! I just have an aversion to even trying it at this point. I was a very picky eater as a child, and while I've gotten much better and opened my palate up considerably, there's some foods I still have an innate "ick" feeling about.
:) I respect that knowledge about yourself, there's many many types of delicious food other than that specific arthropods. (Although I guess you don't like lobsters or mantis shrimps either)
Nope. I like shellfish such as scallop, mussel, oyster, and clam though.
I actually do like peanuts! Peanut sauces can be hit or miss, mostly miss. I'm not sure what's so special about peanut butter that I dislike. It's to the point where I've said I'm allergic to just make it easier for people to understand or accept.
I wonder if it's freshly roasted ground peanut butter vs stale/rancid oils smell in prepared PB? Might explain why sauces are hit or miss with you.
For example I can't stand olives in my food, even passing by the area in the grocer makes me gag, but fresh squeezed olive oil is apparently fine.
My version of this is coffee. I just cannot handle the bitter flavor of coffee. I've gotten used to the smell over the years from my wife making coffee for herself at home, but I can't drink it. I've tried, I hate it every time. If I'm not paying attention and get it in a cocktail, I struggle to finish it. Amusingly, the flavor is hidden enough in something like Tiramisu and I love that stuff.
So when I say I understand our resident onion haters, I really do. I just imagine my repulsion to coffee and I don't really question it.
Maybe slightly off-topic, but Indian food is probably the food culture where it's easiest to get non-onion food, if that's your thing and you ask in advance.
There's the whole culture of Jain food that's somewhat prevalent in India, so if you ask for something without onions/garlic, they'll either be honest about not being able to, or know that you don't want any onions in sauces or whatever either.
Ach; curses, you sniped me by one minute, while I was editing XD
Reactions like that to food are so odd to me... But perhaps it's just my upbringing. I hesitate to call it "spoiled" because there are foods I deliberately avoid, though at the end of the day, if the choice is something I don't particularly like the taste of, or hunger... I choose to eat. I wonder if there's some triggering experience that caused this intense dislike, or perhaps something like the cilantro gene, but reacting specifically to onions? This is a big ask for the OP, but I also wonder if different types of onions (red, yellow, sweet, shallots, etc) provoke the same reaction, or just some?
To answer the question about dicing the onion fine and cooking it until it's no longer detectable, all the flavors and nutrients are spread in the food at that point :)
And to answer the last question... I like onions :D I have a low threshold of raw onion - more than a bit will cause some stomach distress, but I really like onions on a burger or in a salad... and basically everything I cook has onion in it.
I've a friend who has very similar issues as this with food. In my mind, at least, a comparison to epilepsy feels apt: no amount of exposure or willpower is enough to prevent some fundamental wiring in their brain from responding in a particular way to particular stimuli.
For contrast: I think the only meals I've ever had trouble with, decades ago, have been a friend's pancake that was served half liquid (they didn't account for some fruit changing the cooking time), and a chicken sandwich that arrived still clucking. And I think in both cases I strongly considered powering through instead of causing a fuss, but wound up finding a way to discreetly nuke it cooked instead.
I think it's difficult to imagine ourselves as lacking complete control over our own bodies or behaviours, but ultimately, some things are beyond the abilities of the mind to affect.
(edit: just remembered; I also ordered a vegan sandwich with tofu recently-ish, and it arrived with slices of ham. Similarly, I debated just slamming it down, but elected to pick them out instead as the dining situation was informal)
I honestly don't have a big enough distinction between those, it is just "the white bulbous vegetable" to me.
But I don't know if I've had a sweet onion specifically before.
Sweet Vidalia onion salad dressing is my favorite. Unfortunately you probably wouldn't like it because it definitely tastes like onion.
In case it's any solace, for Indian restaurants in particular, I expect that a request for no onions is understandable. One of the major religious movements in the area promotes a type of vegetarianism which precludes onions, among several other types of root vegetables. And anecdotally, at least one non-Indian local food truck defaults to an option of "no onions", so it seems common enough for other cultures.
For myself, I think I routinely double or triple the amount of onions in recipes (same as garlic), and I burn through bags of crispy fried onion garnish and dehydrated onions (for situations where onion powder is less desirable, texturally). But I wouldn't think twice if someone had the opposite response; seems only natural that there are people on either side of the normal curve.
I love the taste of onions, but they do something to my body that I do not like. So I avoid them like poison. After eating onions, it's like my sweat smells different; I have this long-lasting aftertaste in my mouth; and I can feel an almost stickiness on my body, and the smell and feeling lingers for nearly 24 hours. And probably very relatedly, have you seen the other article I posted? Yeah, I avoid onions not just for my own benefit, but for the benefit of those around me.
Many years ago, a friend said "I like cheese, I just don't like what it does to me" and it's become a verbal template for our family. You like [onions], you just don't like what it does to you.
Yeah, food smells come out of pores definitely :/
It's why some Buddhist denominations (?) prohibit alliums at monasteries, because the smell becomes distracting for others' meditation
For the record, I love onions and Indian food. But I just ate at the cafe at the largest Hindu temple in the Western Hemisphere (it's in NJ), and they don't use garlic or onion. I'm not Hindu but my friend is and invited me. The temple was built by a sect of Hindu called Swaminarayan Sampradaya which abstains from meat, eggs, onions, and garlic. I got the samosas and the pav bhaji and both were very tasty.
I say this just to point out that Indian food can still be very good without onions.
improperly cooked through, big chunks is what really gets to me. gags
When I was gigging and traveling to venues in the back of a van, my sandwich of choice was bread, with spread, and raw onion. Sometimes white onion, sometimes scallions, or brown onions. Just onions.
Might be why I had to ride in the back of the van with the amps and mic stands, instead of in the front, but I can't be certain.
I really dislike raw onion and will actively avoid it where I can, I also find the taste overpowers everything else.
That being said, I'm fine with diced cooked onions in things like a Bolognese sauce or other dishes where it blends into the overall flavor profile. I'm also not offended by things cooked alongside large chunks of onion, but I won't eat the onion chunks themselves. Occasionally I'll fish a larger onion chunk out from the rest of a meal and leave it at the edge of my plate if I'm not going to eat it.
@Minithra mentioned that they wouldn't call avoiders of onions "spoiled" per se, but in my case it's almost certainly true. I'm a picky eater and always have been, have always had the luxury of being able to choose another food rather than hunger, and I acknowledge that many others do not. I've expanded my tastes somewhat over the years, but it takes a long time for me to give a new food a shot and I tend to be quite critical of something for the first time.
I do like the flavor but I also cannot stomach raw or even large pieces of cooked onion as it makes my skin crawl and upsets my stomach. I do find I'm able to enjoy onion powder or flakes in cooking if used in moderation. Maybe it's just the dehydration process that makes them OK.
This is how I feel about uncooked onions (white, red, yellow)! For some reason, the other onions/onion-likes (I don't actually know what I'm talking about) don't bother me at all, but I also don't eat them uncooked besides green onions, so perhaps I would dislike those too.
I hate the smell, the taste, and the texture. But as soon as they're cooked or pickled, I'm fine with them.
I've found my people! I've always hated onion in any form that isn't powder. I do appreciate the flavor onion powder brings to dishes, and I cook with it.
But any other form of onion is hard for me to tolerate. I periodically try to test if my tastes have changed and give them another shot, but I've yet to come around to enjoying them across my entire life.
I can't help but wonder if it's environmental due to not having onions at a young age. My mom also hates onions and would never cook with them, etc. Or there's a chance it's genetic, but that seems less likely.
I personally have a strong dislike of raw onions specifically. As long as they are cooked, I am fine with them. The raw onions are just so astringent and overpowering to me.