You’re Cooking With One Onion. You Should Be Cooking With Four

I thought my three-onion chicken salad was a triumph. Red onions for their bite, scallions for their grassy brightness, pickled onions for a puckery jolt of acid. It had crunch, it had sharpness, it had depth. But then, almost as an afterthought, I added fried shallots. And suddenly, the whole thing clicked.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Onions — and their extended allium family, which includes garlic, leeks, shallots, chives and scallions—are nature’s greatest flavor amplifiers. They contain sulfur compounds that make them pungent when raw, mellow when cooked and addictively complex when layered. They are fundamental to cuisines around the world, as essential as salt or heat or acid. And crucially, they are not meant to work alone.

One onion is good. Two onions are better. But the real magic happens when you embrace the full allium spectrum.