Dry your eyes... the tearless onion is here!
GENERATIONS of home cooks have tried all sorts of kitchen tips and tricks to avoid being reduced to tears when cutting an onion.
Some suggest freezing them, while others suggest chopping them under running water, wearing goggles or even keeping a piece of bread in the mouth.
But the answer may finally have arrived in the form of a new super-sweet version of the onion – the Sunion – which claims to be the first truly tearless variety. And Waitrose will start selling them from this month.
Sunions are the result of 25 years of research and careful cross breeding which has led to the virtual elimination of the pungent chemicals that normally irritate the nose and eyes.
Pyruvic acid is the substance that stings the eyes and burns the skin when the onion’s flesh is cut and exposed to the air. Based on a measure of onion pungency, known as the Pyruvate scale, traditional brown onions normally come in with a score of seven or eight.
Sweet onions, such as the Supasweet variety that have been available for around a decade, score under five, while the Sunion comes in at a benign three or less. When Sunions are harvested they are stored, matured and then triple-tested to guarantee an absence of tears when chopped. As typical onions age, the build-up of volatile compounds either stays the same or increases. By contrast, these compounds diminish as the Sunions mature.
Waitrose has announced plans to sell the Sunions in selected shops and online from Tuesday next week. A spokesman said: ‘Crying in the kitchen has become a thing of the past. Sunions are the first tearless onion variety, perfect for those with sensitive eyes.’
The supermarket’s onion buyer, Paul Bidwell, said: ‘We understand how a-peeling tearless onions are to our customers... the sweetness of this type of onion lends itself perfectly to a variety of dishes.’
The Sunions were originally developed in the US. However, the crops shipped to UK stores were grown in Spain.
A three-pack will cost £1.50 – 50p per onion. That is three times as much as Waitrose’s cheapest onions, which cost 14p each.