What Are Button onions and How Can I Use Them?
If button onions have turned up in a recipe or caught your eye at the store, here's what you need to use them with confidence and how to choose them, cook them, store them, what to substitute, and 2 recipes to try them in.
Key Points
- Button onions are tiny whole onions, the same as pearl and boiling onions by another name.
- Cooked whole, they stay intact and turn sweet in stews and butter glazes.
- Blanch about 30 seconds, shock cold, and the skins slip off; frozen pre-peeled skip it.
- Full cooking and buying details live on the pearl onions page.
What are button onions?
Button onions are small whole onions cooked whole instead of chopped, the same little onions sold as pearl and boiling onions. The names mostly track size, with button and pearl at the tiny end.
You use them for the way they hold their shape. Simmered whole in a stew or glazed in butter, they turn sweet and tender while staying intact, the small glossy spheres you see in a classic braise.
Peeling the tiny things is the only real fuss, so blanch them for about 30 seconds, shock them cold, and slip off the skins. Frozen pre-peeled onions skip the job entirely.
Since these are the same onion under another label, the full details sit in one place. See pearl onions for cooking and buying, and the onions hub for the rest.
Quick facts
- In Chinese
- 按钮洋葱
- British (UK) term
- Button onions
- en français
- bouton oignons
- en español
- cebollitas
Recipes using button onions
There are 2 recipes that contain this ingredient.
Salmon Trout Monastery
Ale-poached salmon trout with butter-tossed button onions, mushrooms, and carrots in a rich reduced ale sauce. A classic Irish monastery-style fish dish with rustic elegance.
Garlic Braised Tuna Steaks
Microwave-braised tuna steaks studded with garlic slivers, simmered with pearl onions in red wine, and served on wilted spinach with a tomato-thyme sauce.
