SAN ANTONIO – If chopping onions means a kitchen cry-fest, dry your tears: There’s a new type of onion that’s marketed as sweet and tearless.
They’re called Sunions.
We picked up a bag at the local HEB to see if the veggies live up to the tearless claim.
“I refuse to cut onions,” said Erica Hernandez, KSAT.com colleague and culinary crybaby (at least when it comes to chopping onions). “I pay extra to buy the ones already chopped.”
First, she sliced and diced regular yellow onions, and immediately began sniffling, suffering from a runny nose and watery eyes.
When conventional onions are chopped, a chemical reaction creates a volatile, irritating gas. It wafts, and you weep.
Next up, the Sunion. When we sliced into the so-called tearless onion, it was noticeably juicy.
“So far, so good,” Hernandez said. And, while it smelled like an onion, there wasn’t a watery eye in the house, even when the Sunion was waved in front of the face.
Tearless? Yes. But what about taste?
“Sweet,” was the verdict.
Raw, the Sunions were sweet, crunchy and very mild.
“It’s good raw, like if you wanted to put in in a hamburger,” Hernandez said.
After cooking them in a splash of olive oil, however, we found them less pungent and less flavorful.
The Sunions are the result of some three decades of research and farming, and are now being shipped to more retailers including HEB, Costco and Sam’s Clubs.
They do cost a bit more than regular onions, but if onions trigger your tears, Sunions are nothing to cry about.