Easy Turkish Sumac Onions Recipe (Turkish Onion Salad) (2024)

FAQs

What is Turkish sumac used for? ›

This deep red spice is the main flavor maker in some traditional Middle Eastern dishes like fattoush salad and musakhan, but it is a versatile spice that can add depth and tang to many things including chicken, fish, and all sorts of salads!

Submerge Them in Cold Water

Submerging them in cold water takes away that intense, sharp bite from the raw onion. The cold water helps the enzyme that causes onions to have their pungent flavor to leach out. Similarly, storing onions in the refrigerator will help mellow them out when you go to use them.

The flavor of sumac can be likened to the tang of fresh-squeezed lemon juice; it's tart and sharp, but also contains a hint of sweetness, along with lingering floral notes. “It's a subtle tang with some fruitiness that you wouldn't get from lemon juice,” says food blogger Amina Al-Saigh. “I also love its pink color.

Owing to its bountiful beneficial values, sumac has been used in traditional medicine for the management and treatment of many ailments including hemorrhoids, wound healing, diarrhea, ulcer, and eye inflammation.

When preparing raw onions, soak in cold water before hand to remove some of the pungency and soften the flavor. However since soaking too long will dilute the flavor, soaking in cold water for 5 to 10 minutes is recommended.

Wait 10 minutes, then serve. The salt softens the onion's fibrous texture and mellows the sharpness of their flavor. There are other ways to tame raw onion, of course. You could soak slices in lemon juice for 20 minutes, which lends a slightly pickled flavor, as in this Tomato and Herb Salad with Sumac.

You can get rid of the strong taste by soaking sliced onions in ice water for 20 to 30 minutes or by sprinkling them with an acid such as vinegar. Onions soaked in ice water will get very crisp while those sprinkled with vinegar will soften a bit, but they will lose the strong taste and become sweeter.

Sumac is a tangy and slightly sour spice that is used in many Turkish dishes, including salads and kebabs. It has a reddish-purple color and a tart flavor that is reminiscent of lemon juice.

What Is Sumac Used For? Sumac is most commonly used as a spice in a lot of Middle Eastern cooking, including in the dressing of the popular Lebanese salad fattoush. It's also the base flavor in musakhan, a Palestinian chicken dish, and one of the key ingredients in za'atar, the famous Arabic spice-and-herb sprinkle.

Species with red berries, including smooth and fragrant sumac, produce edible berries, while species with white berries, including poison ivy, have poisonous berries.

Is sumac poisonous to humans? ›

Many people remember the name "sumac" in conjunction with poisonous plants, and worry that all sumacs must be toxic. However, the common sumac species which grow along roads and in fields are not poison sumac. They are either staghorn or smooth sumac, both species quite harmless to touch.