Why stud an onion?
Why do some recipes call for studding onions, i.e., cutting little slits in the onion and putting cloves in?
For example, when I cook a big piece of meat like cow's tongue, what difference would it make whether I put cloves and onion separately in the broth or studded?
Is this just a convenience thing to make it easy to fish out the cloves after cooking? Anything else I'm missing?
Best Answer
It's convenience, and actually doubly so:
It helps to find the cloves (biting down on a clove is horrible, imho, much more than on a stray peppercorn) and it especially if you are using onions with the skin on helps in keeping the onion together. Not as much as leaving the root plate intact, but at least prevents the papery brown skin from drifting off.
If you know you will be straining your soup or sauce anyway, feel free to just dump everything in separately.
Cutting a slit is optional, btw., if you have "pointy" cloves you can just push them in. I prefer making a hole with a toothpick over stabbing the onion with a knife, the cloves "stick" better.
Pictures about "Why stud an onion?"
What is the studded onion?
An Onion Piqu\xe9 is a French flavor booster used by chefs in sauces and soups. It sounds fancy, but it only takes 3 ingredients and 10 seconds to make!What is stud in cooking?
In cooking, stud means to insert flavor-enhancing or decorative edible items (such as whole cloves, slivered almonds, or garlic slivers) partway into the surface of a food so that they protrude slightly. For example, hams are often studded with cloves.How to Make a Studded Onion
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: TANSU TOPUZOĞLU, Pixabay, Anna Tarazevich, Yaroslav Shuraev