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

FAQs

What are sumac onions? ›

Sumac onions, also known as Turkish onions, are thinly sliced onions that are mixed with sumac and parsley and then pickled in lemon juice with a hint of oil. It is an extremely easy dish to make and is commonly used to accompany main protein dishes. Sumac is made by grinding down the dried berries of a sumac plant.

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.

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.

All you need to do is give the sliced onions a good soak in a bowl of water before serving them. This one simple step tames the bite of the raw onions and mellows out their flavor.

Ground sumac is most often used in Turkish seasoning and Arabic spices, ground sumac spice is simply the tangy, citrusy powder from the fruit of the sumac shrub. It is preferred to lemon, tamarind and vinegar for its fresh, zesty flavor.

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.

Both the Greeks and the Turks make tasty salads from a variety of raw fresh vegetables; the Greeks may add Feta cheese, while the Turks may spice it up with peppers. Both the Greeks and the Turks prepare stuffed vine leaves.

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.

Raw onions can add a nice bite to salads, from a green onion sliced and added to a simple green salad to easy creations based almost entirely on the sweetness of Vidalia onions.

Which onions have the best flavor? ›

Yellow onions are the most popular cooking onions because they add excellent flavor to most stews, soups, and meat dishes. In fact, typically when a cooked recipe calls for onion, yellow onion is a safe way to go. Yellow onions have a yellow-brown papery skin on the outside and a white flesh.

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. Squeeze out excess water before using.

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.

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.

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 has a fruity flavor almost like lemon. The sourness can balance the acidity of a dish.

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.