I love cooking, and most dishes I cook contain some kind of onions or garlic in varying amounts. Unfortunately, my partner doesn’t handle them well, so I want to replace them as much as I can.
Leek is one decent alternative to onions, and I’ve recently discovered Asafoetida, a spice that creates an oniony flavor. But onions are also important for texture, especially in saucy dishes, and both leek and spices replace that poorly. Fennel works sometimes but alters the taste.
Garlic generally seems hard to replace, although I’ve had some success with only slightly squashing the cloves and fishing them out before serving.
Anyway, I’m looking for suggestions. Anybody know any good alternatives, any cool tips or tricks I could try?
Edit: To clarify, the issue is that my partner can’t digest them properly and they cause pain (likely a mild food allergy). The flavor is not an issue, and we both enjoy the stuff that we cook apart from this issue.
As someone with massive gut issues who also cannot handle onions or garlic I found Bell Peppers to be my newest favorite flavoring for dishes. Once you get the overwhelming taste of garlic/onion out of the way the pepper’s complex flavors start to really shine through.
Also check out the Low FODMAP diet. Onions/Garlic are the main culprits to remove FODMAP from your diet and there are now lots of recipes available out there without them.
Hello fellow fucked gut individual.
Low fodmap helps me too. Oddly tomatillos are ok but tomatoes will tear ya a new one. Can get a good bit of flavor with some milder green salsa and not have to spend all day paying for it like with red salsa.
I’ll have to give tomatillos a try, thanks for the suggestion.
That’s great, thanks. I’ve heard about the bell pepper trick before somewhere but didn’t know about FODMAP. I’ll give both a try.
Also be wary of any spice blends or pre-packaged foods. At least in the US, 99% of manufacturers are too lazy to look for any other flavor beyond onion/garlic. Its a real pain in the butt (lol)
Green onions are another good substitute. Just don’t use the white part and only chop up the green shoots.
Oh yeah, that’s such a pain. Really tough to find even bread spreads and stuff like that without loads of onion or garlic powder. It’s everywhere…