Onion salad goes wet and bitter

Question

I've been going to this indian restaurant that makes this fantastic onion salad, which is essentially small cuts of white and red onion, cucumber, tomato, garnished with mint leaves, coriander leaves and a pinch of garam masala. I tried to make it at home and the results are astoundingly different. They get wet, soft and slightly bitter; whereas the restaurant tastes sweeter, has a bit of a bite and it is dry-ish. Any idea how restaurants make the salad so tasty?

Answer 1

• Cucumber << water, water, water +++
• Tomatoes << water, water
• Onion << water

Do you see how much water each of those main ingredients contain?

Let's take one at a time.

Onions:-

Fresh onions are not only have a high volume of water, also natrual chemicals that make strong pungent flavour. These chemicals (e.g. Sulphur) work quite well with oxygen in the air, resulting the bitterness.

In order to tone down the flavour and bitterness, soack the onions in ice water. Another method is to add fresh lime juice immediately after slicing/dicing the onions.

Cucumber:-

1. Cut and remove the entire section of seeds. Now dice the cucumber.

2. Remember the little science projects about drawing out excess water from vegetables? Soak Cucumber in ice water with little salt. (Perhaps you could refrain from adding salt to the final salad bowl, if the quantity used at this point suffice)

Same theory goes for making potato chips. Slice potatoes are soaked in water to draw out that extra moisture. No ricket science here though ;)

Tomatoes:- Remove entire section of seeds. Dice them and add into your salad.

Garam masala has Fennel and Cineman, that has the sweetness. It's also possible restaurant adds in a bit of sugar. However, certain onion species are sweeter naturally.

To be frank, we don't use garam masala, mint or corriander. Insated you could have the following simple ingridients to make a heaven of a salad, if you may.

fresh :{cucumber, tomatoes, onion, spicy green chilli, black pepper, salt, lime}

Bon appetit!

Answer 2

The water is definitely coming out of the vegetables. You could salt them before making the salad, but that will leave you with limp, lifeless bits of onion and cucumber, and that is certainly not what your favourite restaurant is doing. The trick to make this salad crisp is to omit the salt! I'm sure you have experienced horrifying results when you forgot to add salt, and it should be one of the foremost things on your mind, but here the mix of fresh herbs, rich tomatoes, strong onions, and fragrant spices won't need much to boost their flavours. A splash of lemon or lime juice can be added, as one does when preparing low-sodium meals, but if you really can't resist salt's allure, sprinkle some on at the last second - any earlier and the flood gates will open.

The bitterness could be from a number of sources: the spices in your mix (try adding sugar to balance them), the seeds of the tomato, or the cucumber if it's a large field variety (gut them), the type of onions you use (try the sweeter reds or Vidalias, not yellow cooking onions), or the fresh herbs (which bruise easily when cut and will become bitter very quickly once that happens - you can tear them to reduce bruising, and add them just at the end).