Don't cry for me

Forget the tears, onions are another great health food, often overlooked as just an ingredient. Onions not only contain high levels of vitamin C, but they also improve how your body handles vitamin C, so you get more benefit from the vitamin C in your other food, which improves your immune system.

The unsung hero of the kitchen not only adds flavour to your cooking, but it can prevent some forms of cancer, coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cataracts amongst other common diseases. It even contains antibiotic chemicals that can reduce the risk of food borne illness from microbial contamination.

The onion is however one of the calorie heavyweights in the vegetable world, with 40 calories per 100g. In reality this isn't that high when compared with a take away pie and chips with gravy, but it is worth remembering if you are calorie counting. Onions however, like most veggies contains no fat and very little sodium and 100g will provide you with 1.7g of fiber, 12% of your RDA vitamin C as well as some calcium, iron,B-6, magnesium and chromium which helps your bodies insulin work effectively.

There are several varieties of onions and below is a list of the most common and ideas on how you can use them.

Yellow Onions (every day onions) are full-flavored and are a reliable staple for cooking almost anything. Yellow onions turn a rich, dark brown when cooked and give French Onion Soup its tangy sweet flavor. It works well raw in salads, and is delicious dry fried with burgers, pulled pork or any meat.

Red Onions, with their wonderful color, are a good choice for using raw or grilling and roasting. They taste great in salads and on kebabs.

White onion, not very well known in the UK, but they have a sharper taste and more pungent aroma. They are the traditional onion for classic Mexican cuisine.

Spring onions are a salad staple, but they can also be used to add a subtle flavour to coleslaw, Chinese recipes and can also be eaten raw with dips as they have such a mild flavour. 

Sweet Onions lack the sharp, astringent taste of other onions and really do taste sweet. They are great thinly sliced and served in salads or on top of sandwiches. They can range in colour from white to yellow and often have a flattened or squashed appearance.

Finally a couple of tips on how to cut onions with less tears.

Use a sharp knife as it will cause less damage to cell walls, and fewer irritants will be released.

Cold onions release less propanethial S-oxide, as it is this chemical irritant that causes tears when it evaporates.

The video from Chow also shows you the 'right way' to chop onions, this works as most of the onion's cut surfaces are not exposed, reducing the surface area from which the irritants can evaporate.