Got a questrion here about onions. I have looked around quite a bit for anything on it, and haven't seen a thing.

I love onions, sautee'd in butter. I hate onions raw. One of my favorite induction side dishes has been some sautee'd onions and mushrooms in real butter (OMG so sinfully delicious!) sometimes topped with a few ounces of mozarella or sharp cheddar cheese. *drool*

Now here is my question. In cooking some foods, you can actually convert the content, ie" corn becomes popcorn because you heat the starch inside the kernel and convert it to a different form.

Is it the same with onions? I had been of the longstanding belief when you cook onions in butter, you are converting the onion starch to sugar, and thats why it becomes sweet. This is called carmelization. Does this actually convert the starch to sugar and change the dietary content? If this is true, is there a cooking time, or something to be watchful of?

Help!

~Fantasia

Count the carbs and enjoy your onions. They are SO beneficial to our bodies that they are worth the cost. All cooked vegies contain a bit of sugar, which is why we're limited to one cup/day of the cooked, but can have 2 additional cups of raw vegies. Any cooking counts as "cooked," so cook them how you like them and enjoy.

I could be wrong here, but I believe the carb content of onion starch and onion sugar would be the same, so regardless of whether the onion has been carmelized or not, the basic carb count wouldn't change.

Hello again Fantasia,

I may be talking rubbish but here is my understanding.

Starch in things like maize (corn) is contained inside the plants cells. The cell walls mean that this starch is not available to us. Heating it causes the starch to swell and burst the cell walls and the corn pops. If we put cooked starch onto our tongues the action of amylase - dictionary definition: "any of several enzymes that hydrolyse starch and glycogen to simple sugars, such as glucose. They are present in saliva" - turns it into sugar and it tastes sweet.

Thus cooking the onions may not convert the starch to sugar but just make it more available to us.

In any case, watch the carbs. Onions are 6 - 8g carbs per 100g and cooking might change the nature of the starch but it won't change the carb count.

I love onions too - raw, pickled, fried in soups great!

Robert

Ah, thanks again, I knew some folks could bring some light to the question.

Considering onions is one of my few carbs, and I eat them usually with dinner, it fits right into my carb count. I was really more concerned with the sugar value, but the replies here made me feel much better about that.

~Fantasia