Jamie Oliver's Onion Trick For Upgraded Pasta Sauce

There are all kinds of ingredients that you can use in pasta sauces to make your hearty plate of noodles more flavorful. Veggies, cheese, olives, and meats all play a part. But there's one ingredient that's in many pasta sauces that you've probably taken for granted: onions. You probably usually just chop em up and throw them into your pan. But wait! British celebrity chef and cookbook author Jamie Oliver has a tip for you. Oliver took to Instagram to inform pasta lovers, "[Wash] sliced onions to make them milder, and that moisture also helps to add extra sweetness as they cook." His advice came to him from an Italian nonna, and was for a seafood pasta sauce, but it would work with any simple sauce containing onions. The chef lists 175 pasta recipes on his website, and first came to fame in a celebrated London-based Italian restaurant, The River Cafe, so has considerable experience making great pasta dishes.

Before you add sliced onions to your pasta sauce, wash them under cold water and you'll find that the water has softened the onion's sharper flavors. That's because cold water can drain an onion of the enzyme that gives onions their pungent flavor. The washed onions will also become crisper and sweeter.

You can execute Jamie Oliver's onion tip in several steps before mixing them in your pasta sauce. After you've sliced the onions to your liking, drop the sliced vegetables in a sieve or colander. Position this under your faucet's running water with a steady stream. Make sure your running water is the absolute coldest it can be because colder water will temper the sharpness of the onion most effectively.

Jumble the onions around in the sieve or colander for a minute or so while they're under the running water so that each piece is sufficiently rinsed. Once rinsed, drain the excess water from the onions before transferring them to a paper towel or cloth. Blot the onions with a paper towel to get rid of surplus moisture. Now they're ready to be cooked into your sauce mixture to sweeten your simple tomato sauce recipe. If you're using jarred sauce, sauteeing some of these rinsed onions before you add the contents of the jar is just one of a few ways to make your store-bought sauce taste more homemade.

Jamie Oliver's tip for making onions milder and sweeter for adding to your homemade or store-bought pasta sauce can also be achieved by soaking your sliced onions. If you submerge the onions in cold water, the sulfur compounds that cause the pungent flavor of onions will dissolve into the water in the bowl. 

To do this, slice or chop onions the way that you want them, and dunk them into a bowl of ice-cold water. Give the onions about 10 minutes to soak in their icy bath, stirring them a little from time to time. After they are sufficiently soaked, drain the excess water from the onions and blot them on kitchen towel. Then you can transfer the onions to your pan to cook, before adding the rest of the pasta sauce mixture. After that, you just need to get ready for an infusion of sweet flavor that will seriously upgrade your spaghetti sauce.