{"id":879141,"date":"2025-12-20T00:13:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T06:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/20\/recipes-always-list-onions-by-size-but-who-decides-what-medium-means-ive-found-a-better-way\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T00:13:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T06:13:06","slug":"recipes-always-list-onions-by-size-but-who-decides-what-medium-means-ive-found-a-better-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/20\/recipes-always-list-onions-by-size-but-who-decides-what-medium-means-ive-found-a-better-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Recipes Always List Onions by Size, but Who Decides What \u201cMedium\u201d Means? I\u2019ve Found a Better Way."},"content":{"rendered":"

Recipes <\/p>\n

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Food<\/a><\/p>\n

What the Hell Is \u201cHalf an Onion\u201d?!<\/h2>\n

Recipes usually list onions as medium<\/em> or large<\/em>, but actual sizes at the store vary wildly. Why can\u2019t we just get an accurate measure?<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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\nPhoto illustration by Slate. Photos by Unsplash, Olha\/AdobeStock, grey\/Adobe Stock, and Kenishirotie\/Adobe Stock.<\/span>
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Recipe for Disaster<\/em><\/a> is Slate\u2019s column about the things recipes get wrong\u2014and how to fix them. If you\u2019ve noticed a recipe annoyance, absurdity, or outright lie, <\/em>file your complaint here<\/em><\/a> and we will investigate!<\/em><\/p>\n

Like the great George Costanza once said, \u201cI gotta focus. I\u2019m shifting into soup mode.\u201d <\/em>Feel the air, folks; it\u2019s finally soup season\u2014our fridges are stocked with carrots and crunchy stalks of celery, our pantries are equipped with onions, and our eyeballs are scanning the internet (and hopefully some cookbooks) for the next great soup recipe.<\/p>\n

This month\u2019s column is inspired directly from a concerned reader, whose perturbation lies with those aforementioned onions\u2014which these days seem to be arriving at the market the size of a rec-league softball:<\/p>\n

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So many recipes call for \u201ca small onion\u201d or \u201chalf a medium onion.\u201d What the hell is that, exactly? Have you been to a grocery store lately? They sell only one size of onion, and they\u2019re about three-fourths pound each! Even the staffers of Cook\u2019s Illustrated use this format, and they pride themselves on their accuracy. Is it that impossible to specify \u201c\u00bc cup diced\u201d or \u201c1 cup chopped\u201d or \u201c4 oz of onions\u201d?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I immediately felt that this reader was on to something, but just to be sure, I dutifully snooped around my local grocery store conglomerates. Indeed, massive<\/em> onions dominated the selections. Grocery bins are rife with big, clunky melon-looking alliums. I thought about taking one, gargantuan and tumbling as they were, and rolling it down the aisle like a bowling ball, just to see how far it would go. I quickly ascertained that these onions, large and hefty, could probably smash the windshield of the police vehicle parked out front of the store (not that I was fantasizing about that sort of thing, obviously<\/em>). I took one home to weigh, and it\u2014a big boy of the yellow variety\u2014came in at a whopping 412\u00a0grams (\u201clarge\u201d onions are usually estimated<\/a> to be between 225 and 275\u00a0grams, depending on whom you ask). Forget medium or even large; this was jumbo<\/em> onion territory.<\/p>\n

Later, I scooted down to the farmers market, where I located, rather easily, beautifully delicate, orblike true<\/em> medium onions (these the size of a baseball) and, farther along from those, all-too-rare small<\/em> onions<\/em> curled into a tiny basket typically meant for berries. (Sometimes, the farmers market is obnoxiously<\/em> cute.) All of the small onions weighed between 65 and 85\u00a0grams, and the mediums approached but rarely exceeded 200\u00a0grams. So it\u2019s possible to get aromatics that aren\u2019t totally overgrown, but you do have to go out of the way to the farmers market to pay farmers market prices.<\/p>\n

Lan Lam, the deputy food editor for America\u2019s Test Kitchen, confirmed my suspicions. \u201cThe larger chains seem to carry softball-sized Spanish and white onions,\u201d she tells me. \u201cAnd onions from the farmers market vary quite a bit in size. It comes down to the purveyors that individual buyers purchase from.\u201d Our disgruntled reader is dead-on: Grocery store onions are too damn big. Moreover, depending on where you shop, onion sizes can be\u00a0\u2026 erratic. So why don\u2019t<\/em> recipe writers just give accurate measurements of how much they want in the dish? And what the hell is \u201chalf a medium onion,\u201d anyway?<\/p>\n

In this quick video interview<\/a> with two ATK cooks from 2018, they detail that a medium onion is about the size of a tennis ball. \u201cWe always say that one medium onion yields 1\u00a0cup of prepared product,\u201d they note. \u201cSo if you have a bigger onion, you just adjust accordingly.\u201d I bring up this somewhat old video (the basic calculations of which Lam reconfirmed) for a reason: This was 2018, and today, seven years later, after a pandemic in which the entire bleary-eyed world<\/em> spent a lot more time in the kitchen, I submit that home cooks (like our reader) want measurements<\/em>. Precision. It\u2019s not enough to just tell someone to \u201cadjust accordingly,\u201d not when digital scales are becoming more commonplace in the kitchen, and when we demand exactness<\/em> in every area of our daily routine.<\/p>\n

I mean, we\u2019re getting a ball-strike challenge system<\/a> in Major League Baseball for a reason\u2014society has grown mostly weary of unnecessary inaccuracy. Cooking, like baseball, isn\u2019t life-and-death (discounting mussels and oysters, which can actually kill you. I suppose a baseball at the right speed could also<\/em> kill you, but follow me here). If we can make something that\u2019s a pastime<\/em> easier, more precise, then we should. That\u2019s the modern thinking, anyway: If we have the chance to optimize, we take it\u2014never mind what might be lost in the process (more on that later).<\/p>\n

So why not just list \u201c1\u00a0cup finely chopped onions\u201d instead of \u201cone medium onion\u201d? \u201cThis sort of gets into how recipes are written,\u201d explains Lam. \u201cAn ingredient list often doubles as a shopping list, and it needs to be succinct and clear. If you\u2019re at the store, \u2018one onion\u2019 is a lot easier to shop for than \u20181\u00be cups of coarsely chopped onion.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Kitchn<\/a>, most onions are labeled as medium or large in recipes, but with a catch: They\u2019re also<\/em> listed by weight, usually in pounds (most grocery stores do still have scales, even if hidden in a back corner), or by volume<\/a>. The volume measurements aren\u2019t exact, but they do give cooks something firmer to grab onto when enacting a recipe. The idea is to get people used to the idea of what a medium onion will amount to, roughly, when diced.<\/p>\n

Christine Gallary, the senior recipe editor for the Kitchn, echoes Lam in explaining that onions are listed by size to make shopping easier: \u201cWhen developing or editing recipes, I always try to think what is most helpful for someone shopping in the grocery store and prepping at home.\u201d But there\u2019s no rule that says you must list onions only<\/em> by size. \u201cAt the Kitchn, we like to give two indicators for onions,\u201d Gallary says. \u201cWe generally start with size (small, medium, or large) because that\u2019s easy to eyeball in the store, and then we give a volume measurement for the amount after it\u2019s prepped.\u201d However, she tells me, the Kitchn considers a medium yellow onion to be 1\u00bd\u00a0cups when diced, a quantity that is considerably higher than the single cup of finely chopped onion that Lam says is standard at ATK. \u201cIt\u2019s not a perfect system,\u201d admits Gallary, \u201cbut, to be honest, since onions are almost exclusively used in savory cooking, a little more or a little less will probably not make a big deal in the final dish!\u201d<\/p>\n

More pedantic individuals probably won\u2019t be satisfied with that answer, but I find myself agreeing with her: A slight increase or decrease in the onion likely won\u2019t significantly affect the dish, especially<\/em> when the onions are cooked. (Raw onions, naturally, should be used sparingly and judiciously.) The whole debate raises a good question: Are we being a little too precise in our savory cooking? In soups, stews, pasta dishes, and stir-fries, is it really that<\/em> important to specify the amount of onions down to the teaspoon?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen there\u2019s leeway regarding the size of the onion, we\u2019ll just call for one onion or maybe one large onion,\u201d says Lam. \u201cBut if the details matter, we\u2019ll call for one large white onion, finely chopped (1\u00bd\u00a0cups). <\/em>It helps you when you\u2019re shopping and when you\u2019re cooking.\u201d<\/p>\n

With regard to Cook\u2019s Illustrated and ATK, Lam says that they \u201clove scales and the precision they allow.\u201d However, when it comes to onions, she admits that, within reason, there are simply very few recipes in which the exact weight of the onion matters. \u201cWe trust home cooks to make the right call.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with that, we have the major theme that emerged for me in this story: trust. Most recipes aren\u2019t written for the novice, for the trepidatious beginner, for the entry-point recipe-makers. They\u2019re for the people with paying subscriptions (hello, Slate Plus subscribers!), the NYT Cooking commenters, the people who know a thing or two about a thing or two in the kitchen. When I revisit the reader\u2019s question, I can\u2019t help but worry we\u2019re becoming a little too scrupulous with regards to cooking at home. What makes cooking such a gratifying creative endeavor is the ability to change<\/em>, to taste and feel, the sensation<\/em> of cooking. Turning every aspect of it into a mathematical equation\u2014well, I\u2019d argue that you lose something of major importance.<\/p>\n

Not to mention that pursuing an exact, uniform measurement of onion is chasing a mirage. Even the most fastidious recipe writers, like J. Kenji L\u00f3pez-Alt<\/a> of Serious Eats, know that there\u2019s no such thing as a perfect measurement when it comes to onions, which will always vary in size, flavor, and potency. According to L\u00f3pez-Alt, \u201cIn fact, flavor, moisture content, sugar content, etc. can differ greatly between onions, which means that you\u2019re both wasting your time by worrying about that level of precision and also creating a less consistent product by relying on your scale instead of your tongue or your other senses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, there\u2019s little I love more than wasting my time in the name of onion journalism. So I found an industry-standard tennis ball\u2013sized medium onion and weighed the damn thing. This one came out to 207\u00a0grams (a little big), and I had to obtain it at the farmers market. (Grocery chains really do need to start carrying a range of sizes again!) I cut one end clean off, split the onion in half, peeled it, then made a horizontal incision in both halves before chopping. I ended up with a cup of diced onions plus a few extra tablespoons, adding up to nearly a cup and a quarter. It wasn\u2019t the ATK standard cup I was aiming for, but that\u2019s OK. Measuring onions will never be an exact science, and personally, I\u2019m happy that it isn\u2019t. Some things in life just shouldn\u2019t be optimized. Maybe I had a little too much onion on my hands, but, dear reader, if there\u2019s one thing I\u2019ve learned in my onion investigations, it\u2019s that becoming obsessed with measurements doesn\u2019t actually lead anywhere meaningful. What\u2019s lasting in the kitchen is your instincts<\/em>, because you\u2019ve got them\u2014and, as the many great recipe writers I\u2019ve interviewed say over and over again, they trust you to make the right call.<\/span><\/p>\n

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