Just thinking about them makes me cry. It's no wonder so many people don't like to cook when nearly every recipe begins with chopping onions. Without them there would surely be more cooks in the world.

That's because although they're the basis of most of the world's most savory dishes, onions make your eyes so uncomfortable when you're cutting them up that you have to wonder if the dish you're making will be worth so much discomfort.

Since I started wearing contact lenses in the late 70s, cutting onions hasn't bothered me much. But once in a while I take my contacts out to give my eyes a rest, wearing glasses while I cut my quotidian onions, and boy does it burn. And I cry so hard I consider starting up a Scrabble game or calling out for pizza instead of making carbonnades à la flamande.

The sulfuric compounds that cause those toxic fumes, the “strong and acrid sulphuretted essence” (Larousse Gastronomique), are sort of a skunk-like self-defense mechanism on the onion's part, irritating us by combining with bodily fluids like tears.

The only way I have ever been able to overcome that weeping is by putting my contacts back in, but suggestions for preventative measures are as numerous as hiccup cures. Hold a match between your teeth, wet your forearms with water, wear goggles, hurry, put your onion in the fridge or freezer first, put a piece of bread on the end of your knife, chop the onions under running water or next to a fan or lit candle, or cut the root end last (supposedly where the highest concentration of volatile oils lurk). I've heard that if you stick out your tongue or chew gum the evil vapors will make a beeline for your mouth instead of your eyes. Or just entice someone else to cut your onions for you, in exchange for a backrub, perhaps. Or your first born child.

A sharp knife helps cut them up quickly and efficiently, shortening torture time. It's when cutting onions that I'm the most pleased when I've just had my knives sharpened, when the blade slides so efficiently through the onion flesh, with little resistance.

The evocative onion's layers---a circle in a circle in a circle---inspired ancient Egyptians to bury it with the Pharaohs, symbolizing eternal life. For more than 5000 years we've been growing onions in our gardens. “It is hard to imagine civilization without the onion,” said Julia Child. Although some people think they hate them, and although “onions” and “excitement” rarely coexist in a sentence, the classic liver and onions without them would be merely … liver.

At my house we have to have a lot of onions around all the time, approaching panic if stores run low. When I worked at Carbur's Restaurant in Burlington, Vermont, we went through so many that we had to keep 50-pound bags of them in size Super Colossal (more than 4 1/2 inches across) upstairs in a loft over the kitchen, accessible only by a built-in wooden ladder. One of my principal job duties was dragging those heavy bags down the ladder and to my workstation, a painful induction into restaurant cooking.

Globe onions come in two basic types, salad and soup. The former are fresh and perishable, in season only in the summer, and the category includes those sweet moist Walla Wallas and Vidalias that require raising in warm climates to be sweet. The latter are the sturdy, stronger tasting storage onions that are in season August through April, perfect for long-simmered foods like soups and stews. In both categories you'll find them in yellow, red and white. Yellow is by far the most common, the red a slightly sweeter type with Italian connotations, and the white sharp and more common south of the border.

The fresh kind is great in salads, adding sweet crunch, but the stronger storage type is good raw in salads, too, in moderation, providing bite and savor. Classic Italian salads I like to make that use onions include one with orange slices and black olives, another with imported tuna in olive oil with cannellini beans and parsley, and finally a potato and green bean salad with plenty of red onion. But a little onion adds zip to modest salads of any kind from potato to tomato to bean to good old green.

I like to make an orange onion relish to jazz up Indian dishes, the chopped onion mellowed with a soak in water first. Raw onions, sweet or not, are great on sandwiches and burgers, too. As are sautéed onions, classic on Philly cheese steak. Onions make a great team with beef, and also with cheeses like Cheddar, Gruyere and Swiss. My standard omelet is stuffed with our house staples: sautéed onions and mushrooms with sharp Vermont Cheddar. The other day I braised some thick pork chops with lots of soft sweet sautéed onions and apples and a splash of flambéed brandy. This week I will make that carbonnades à la flamande, a Flemish dish of thick slices of chuck roast simmered for hours with beer and lots of gentle onions.

Onions add sweetness and depth to the classic French soupe à l'oignon gratinée, traditionally eaten after late nights on the town or for an early breakfast by market workers. The French also invented chunky onion confit, the buttery puréed onion sauce called soubise, the rich Alsatian onion tart and the Provençal pissaladière, that pizza topped with quantities of caramelized onion and dotted with anchovies and olives.

Tiny onions spice up coq au vin, the hearty chicken stew of Burgundy, but are painstaking to peel. Or they can be pickled or popped into the gin cocktail called the Gibson. Another classic use for the teeny orbs is creamed as a side dish for festive occasions, although James Beard said that “…many people, including the author, find that creamed onions have tradition and little else to support them.”

Batter-fried onion rings are better than they ought to be, and the modern version, the Blooming Onion, enjoys exalted trend status.

Presenting a whole stuffed onion as side or garnish is pretty universal from Saudi Arabia to France to Holland, although I have rarely done it. Fillings usually include flavor sponges like rice or bread with embellishments like ham, lamb, cheese, mushrooms, celery, raisins or fresh herbs.

In India they love their onions, cooking greens with onions browned to bring out an intense bittersweetness. And there's the bhaji, an onion fritter that holds its own among the cornucopia of Indian appetizers like pakora and samosa.

In Ethiopia many dishes have a complex spiciness reminiscent of some Indian food, and many dishes begin with lots of chopped red onions dry-sautéed with no oil or butter. Miraculously they don't stick, developing a unique, almost smoky, primary flavor layer only enhanced by the spiced clarified butter added later.

Onions are so ubiquitous, universal and irreplaceable that we put up with their myriad annoyances. Besides all those pesky burning tears, there's onion smell on the hands and onion breath. Rubbing your hands on the metal product called NOnion, or even a faucet, is said to alleviate the former, munching fresh parsley the latter. But annoyances aside, what other kitchen staple can inspire an ode like this one, penned by one Charles Dudley Warner in 1871?

“The onion and its satin wrappings is among the most beautiful of vegetables and is the only one that represents the essence of things. It can be said to have a soul.”

Jennifer Brizzi | P.O. Box 48 | Rhinecliff, New York 12574 | U.S.A.

jenniferbrizzi@yahoo.com

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