You can not imagine eating blooming onions without the appetizing onion sauce that comes with this mouthwatering dish no matter where you order it from. If you have no idea what blooming onions are, think of onions cut into the shape of wedges and deep-fried, there you have your crispy blooming onions. It is one of the most addicting side dishes and while the blooming onions are hot and crunchy, the onion sauce adds zest to them. Without the famous sauce, blooming onions are nothing more than some creative onion rings. So, if you are gonna make blooming onions at home, you can use our quick homemade blooming onion sauce recipe.
Before we show you how to make a blooming onion sauce, let us go over our favorite recipe to make some of the most delicious blooming onions you can munch into.
Blooming Onion Recipe
You can not expect us to give you the blooming onion sauce recipe without teaching you how to make the crispy blooming onions at home. So, here is the easiest recipe for making your flavorsome blooming onions.
Ingredients
- 1 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 1 cup flour
- 1 big onion
-  ¾ cup cooking oil
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1/3 teaspoon oregano
- ½ teaspoon black pepper (ground)
- 1 ½ teaspoons cayenne pepper
- 1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/8 teaspoon cumin (ground)
Directions
Cut the top and bottom of the onion and take off the papery thin layer after removing the outermost skin. Using a small knife cut the onion from the center in a vertical fashion to take out the middle part. Now cut the onion from all sides downwards and stop near the bottom layer to stop the petals from falling out of the shape. Carefully slice out the petals until the onion has been cut around 16 times. Spread all the petals by putting the whole onion into boiling water for one minute and then soaking it into cold water.
To make the batter for the blooming onions, take a large bowl and mix the egg and milk in it. In a different bowl put salt, flour, cayenne pepper, thyme, cumin, and all the other spices and mix thoroughly. Take out the onion petals from the cold water and dip them in the egg mixture. Then coat the petals into the flour blend and ensure all of the petals are fully coated. Double coat the petals so that the coating doesn’t wash off once in the oil.
Pour oil in a deep enough pan to dip the coated petals into the heated oil at around 175 degrees Celsius. Fry the onion petals from each side evenly and take them out once a golden brown shade appears. Put the toothsome onion sauce made from our homemade onion sauce recipe next to your blooming onions and start munching.
Quick And Easy Blooming Onion Sauce Recipe
You would be surprised to find almost all of the ingredients for this onion sauce recipe in your pantry, except maybe the horseradish. If you know about it and have horseradish at home, that’s wonderful, but for those who don’t, it is a root similar to wasabi. Only it’s not as greenish, has a strong spicy taste, and is sold shredded. Horseradish is the most essential element of the blooming onion sauce recipe, so let’s get to it.
Here are two different onion sauce recipes that you can enjoy with your crispy hot blooming onions.
Traditional Blooming Onion Sauce Recipe
Ingredients For The Blooming Onion Sauce Recipe
- Â 2 tablespoons horseradish cream
- 2 tablespoons ketchup
- ½ cup mayonnaise
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon paprika
- 1/8 teaspoon oregano (dried)
- 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
- One pinch of cayenne pepper
- One pinch of black pepper (ground)
Preparation Instructions For The Onion Sauce Recipe
Take a wide bowl and put mayonnaise, ketchup, cream-style horseradish, and mix well to make a thick blend. Then add all the spices to the bowl and stir well until all spices are combined evenly.
Cover the bowl with food wrapping and put it in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes before serving. Your onion sauce recipe is done and the sauce is ready to be served with flaming hot blooming onions, enjoy!
White Onion Sauce Recipe
If you are a big fan of appetizers like blooming onions and onion rings, you will be familiar with different types of sauces you can get with them. One such option is the finger-licking white onion sauce that is a sister sauce of the spicy blooming onion sauce.
Here is an easy white onion sauce recipe you can make at home.
Ingredients
-  ½ finely chopped onions
- 2 tablespoons plain flour
- 40 grams butter
- 1 ½ cups milk
- 1 teaspoon parsley
Directions
Take a saucepan and put butter in it, melt the butter by putting the pan on heat. Once the butter is fully melted, empty the plain flour in it and mix well until bubbles start to appear. Take the pan away from the flame and slowly pour milk while stirring the butter mixture.
Return the butter and milk contents to flame and add sliced onions and let them boil. For about two minutes, let the mixture simmer on low heat. After removing the pan from the heat, add parsley to enhance the taste. Let it cool and your white onion sauce recipe is good to go.
Blooming Onion Sauce Can Be Used With More Than Just Blooming Onions
For blooming onions, you would not find a better sauce than this onion sauce recipe, but it is not just for the blooming onions. This onion sauce recipe has a much versatile role and can be used for many appetizers and fried dishes. Here is a list of all the meals you can enjoy dipping in the Blooming onion sauce.
Hamburgers
Next time you get a large juicy hamburger, try eating it with the blooming onion sauce. It will give you a brand new experience of a rich and spicy feel in your mouth. If you are making hamburgers at home, you can even put the sauce in the burger instead of dipping it in the sauce.
Fried Chicken
Eating fried chicken with the blooming onion sauce recipe we taught you will add a fiery twist to the tender chicken texture. It might be an exploratory combination for some people but it’s totally worth it.
Fish
If you haven’t tried savoring some salmon with our blooming onion sauce recipe, you are missing out big time. Try it today to let your taste buds celebrate with the soft and tangy feel of this delightful combination.
Mozzarella Sticks
Make some onion sauce using the blooming onion sauce recipe we have given you and eat your mozzarella sticks in a new way. Spread the condiment on the stick or dip it in and let the cheese and the onion sauce melt in your mouth.
Sweet Potato And Fries
The sweetened and tangy taste of the sweet potatoes is enhanced multifold with the zesty blooming onion sauce. Have a party at home or a movie night with your partner, sweet potato fries with our onion sauce recipe are the best combo for a perfect munch time.
Vegetables
If you are on a diet or living a healthier lifestyle, there is no need for you to eat the same boring meals day and night. You can add a nice spin to your carrots, broccoli, and celery sticks by eating them with the lovely onion sauce dip. It has nothing that can be damaging to your healthy diet as you can see in the blooming onion sauce recipe above.
Tips For Storing Leftover Onion Sauce
You can not make blooming onion sauce and eat it all at once. As good as it may taste fresh, there is always some sauce left after each serving that needs to be stored. There are many things you should consider before storing the leftover onion sauce, some of them include the following.
- This blooming onion sauce recipe requires you to put it in the fridge for some time to enhance its flavors. This means you have to store it in a fitted airtight jar to avoid any smells and flavors from the refrigerator.
- Use the stored refrigerator onion sauce within two or a maximum of three weeks to eat it fresh. After that period, the sauce starts to turn slimy, and it tastes and smells bad due to the pungent horseradish in it.
- Once you take out some sauce from the refrigerator for serving with different meals, do not re-refrigerate it as it can cause health concerns. Always put a small percentage of onion sauce on your plate to avoid wasting any leftover sauce.
- When following the blooming onion sauce recipe, be sure to add a suitable amount of horseradish as it has a strong smell. Adding too much horseradish can make the onion sauce recipe way too spicy and pungent to be relished with anything. But also don’t overlook adding the horseradish as it is the key ingredient of the onion sauce recipe.
- Do not put the onion sauce in a jar that has any water drops in it, because moisture can give birth to mold and fungus. As soon as the fungus starts growing in the sauce, it becomes inedible.
- Put the blooming onion sauce container in a cool place like a refrigerator especially when the weather is too hot outside. Excessive heat can ruin the sauce and make it unusable. If the temperature is already low, then you can surely put the onion sauce on your kitchen shelf or the dining table.
- If you get the blooming onion sauce from the store instead of making it at home with the onion sauce recipe, always put it in the refrigerator. That’s because the grocery store condiments always have preservatives in them that can be harmful if left in the heat.
Maximum Storage Time For Different Sauces
You can not store all the condiments that you get from the grocery store or make at home. Some after being opened need to be refrigerated immediately for further use but many of them can only be eaten only once or twice after opening. Depending on what kind of sauce it is you can even freeze them and then defrost or reheat them to use later on.
Can Only Be Served Once: Pan sauce and Beurre blanc
Can Be Stored For 24 Hours: Salsa
Can Be Stored For 2 Days: Vegetable puree, Crème anglaise, Marinara, Fruit coulis, and fresh ingredients vinaigrette sauce.
Can Be Stored For 1 Week: Mayonnaise and vinaigrette with herbs and shallots
Can Be Stored For 2 Weeks: Caramel sauce, Chocolate sauce, Ginger-soy sauce, Tapenade and Pesto
Can Be Frozen For 2 Months: Chocolate sauce, Marinara, Fruit coulis, Caramel Sauce, and Pesto
The History Behind Eating Foods With Sauces
Whether it’s the flaming hot tabasco sauce or the famous blooming onion sauce, humans have always been fascinated by all sorts of condiments. Several recipes similar to the blooming onion sauce recipe have been found in the ancient 18th-century cookbooks. This gives us an idea of how old the sauce-making and eating tradition is.
The word sauce was originally derived from a French word meaning to relish, and no doubt it means to relish the food because sauces make every meal a bit more tasty and worth eating. Sauces always come in the semi-liquid form and they make food look fresher and delightful. Another reason for the popularity of sauces was their ability to make food more digestible.
We all love the easy onion sauce recipes but did you know where sauces originally came into existence? Who started this trend of eating our meals with condiments?
Back in 200 AD, Romans started eating sauces with the food that they thought was not entirely fresh. As there was no way of refrigerating the food, it used to get spoiled really fast. So, they used condiments to screen any bad smell or taste of the old food. With time, every dish that they ate was served with a sauce as it was becoming a custom. Meals like chicken, boiled meat, and red meat were never complete without the spicy sauces and other side items.
The sauces in the 17th and 18th centuries were made with only a couple of ingredients with one being the main element of the sauce. But within time, the early cooks started adding more and more components to the sauces. Those sauces had so many ingredients that it became difficult to know which was the core ingredient that was giving taste to the sauce.
The present-day onion sauce recipe is not so different from the basic ancient sauce recipe. Although they used wheat flour to give the sauces a thicker consistency, their chief seasoning item was liquamen and they used honey to add a sweet touch to the sauce.
Just like in today’s food market where dozens of companies are making condiments of more than a hundred types, Romans had factories that made their sauces. The only difference is that eating food with sauces was required back then to hide its stale taste whereas today we eat food with sauces because we love it.
Back when the Roman Empire ruled, five basic sauces were used with every food, commonly known as the mother sauces. Those sauces are the basic ingredients of most of the condiments that we eat today. The oldest of those include; Brune, blonde, and velouté; these three sauces were present during the 18th century but are no longer used today.
However, the other two sauces, bechamel, and mayonnaise were introduced more than a hundred years ago and we still use them to make all of our modern-day condiments. Nearly all the sauces we make at home or in the food factories contain some amount of mayonnaise. Even the onion sauce recipe we have shared has mayonnaise as a key ingredient in it.
Different Kinds Of Onions And Their Uses
Onion is an extremely universal ingredient, no matter what dish you’re making, there will always be a need for one or two onions. Even in our white onion sauce recipe, you need half a chopped onion.
Onions do not serve a significant role in food in terms of nutrition, with just the common vitamins but they have the art of making food taste good beyond any other food ingredients. You can make your dish syrupy, aromatic, spicy, and savory just by adding onions to it because onions come in so many different kinds.
Each kind has its taste, aroma, size, and uses. Here is a list of diverse kinds of onions and their uses to make pickling onions easier for you.
Red Onions
With the deep reddish-magenta color, red onions have a peppery and a milder spicy taste to them. Some of the red onions have a light sweeter taste as well, such as those grown in months from March to August. Red onions are used best for salads, burgers, and sandwiches to add a colorful look to them for enhancing the appearance of the dish. With their powerful taste, they make the best combo with the vegetables like arugula, carrots, and kale. With the dark reddish color, adding red onions to the white onion sauce recipe is not a good idea.
White Onions
White onions are best for the white onion sauce recipe and as well as blooming onions. Adding white onions to the grilled dishes and salads is a common practice as they have little or no aftertaste and don’t have an intense fragrance.
Their taste is less peppery and more towards the sweeter side, making them best for the tacos, guacamole, and salsas. White onions have a milder white color and a papery skin that is easy to peel. Most of the dishes that require white onions are served fresh and raw.
Shallots
These are small bulb-shaped onions with a light orange-brownish skin and purplish inner color. Shallots taste like a combination of onion and garlic eaten together. Being small and evenly layered, they are best for being sliced thinly as in the white sauce recipe.
Shallots are sold in a large quantity in the USA for sauces and salad dressings. They give out an intense taste when grilled for the fried chicken and beef steaks. With their pungent aroma and small lobes, many chefs prefer this kind of onion for making condiments like vinaigrette.
Sweet Onions
Having light yellow skin, it becomes hard for a common person to distinguish between yellow onions and sweet onions. Sweet onions are somewhat flatter and bigger than the yellow onions and have a sweetened taste. These onions have an excess amount of sugar in them that makes them perfectly suited for caramelizing.
Sweet onions are the ideal form of onions for the blooming onion recipe as well as the white onion sauce recipe. From raw eaten dishes like salads to fried dishes like onion rings, sweet onions work flawlessly for all. You can even use them for garnishing in Mexican and Asian dishes.
Green Onions
These green-white blended onions are a highly common ingredient in Chinese cuisines. Green onions are young onions which is why all of their parts are used, green long shoots as well as the white bulb part. The white part can be used in Mexican dishes and grilling whereas the green part is typically consumed raw.
The green part adds a wonderful flavor to the Chinese soups, omelets, stews, and tacos. They are the central element in the garnishing of dishes with their radiant color and ideal size cutting. In different regions of the world, green onions are also called scallions, salad onions, and spring onions.
Yellow Onions
It is the most commonly used type of onion, if you are unsure which type of onion your recipe needs, the safest decision is to go with the yellow onions. They have dark yellow-brownish color skin and an intense aroma.
The yummy caramelized onions you get in your burgers and sandwiches are the yellow onions. They are easily cooked on low heat and add a rich taste to your food.
So now you know which onions to choose for your blooming onion and onion sauce recipe.
