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Onion tea broth can be life changing... really? Yes, really!

Updated: Jan 15, 2022


My first nutrition blog post and never in a million years would I have thought it would be about onion tea – the one my grandmother used to make when I was little and got a cough. Yet as a Culinary Nutrition Expert student I should have known that was exactly where I was going to end up starting (pun intended), as the course teaches how important it is to understand how food can be both nourishment and medicine for our body and mind, or poison indeed. Food can be as simple as boiling an unpeeled organic onion in filtered water, or it can be as complicated as boiling an unpeeled organic onion in filtered water. The onion tea as medicine always soothed my cough, and onion boiled in water does make the base for most of the soups we are used to eat. Food as medicine, food as nourishment – it feeds our body by providing it with the right tools to heal itself, and to thrive.


How did I get to onion tea as life changing though? During my journey with the Academy of Culinary Nutrition we were asked to develop a recipe, and I felt terrified. Haven’t all recipes been written already? Or maybe if there are combinations not yet done that is because they must taste quite awful and they should never be brought to light… what if I was going to create such an abomination myself? I always struggled with cooking, especially deviating from a recipe as my mother was never keen on having me in the kitchen when I was a child. Homemade food was a staple of my childhood, yet as I got married and moved to a different country without knowing how to cook my diet changed drastically to mostly pre-prepared, processed foods.


In the beginning I seemed to be able to eat anything, yet slowly something was happening that in a few years time would stop me from being able to enjoy my life fully - this something started affecting my nervous system, my digestive system, and in the end it also affected my immune system. I was eating nutrient lacking, inflammatory ‘food like substances’ that were not helping my body function, let alone thrive, while being under continuous stress from major life changes. Little did I know back then that these were the right elements that would create a perfect storm which was going to shake and rattle my boat of health a few years later with Graves’ disease and solar urticaria, both auto-immune diseases with no known cure.


During my perfect storm I learned so much about my body and how it thrives or suffers depending on what I feed it. This forced me to reconsider my reluctance to go in the kitchen and start cooking. I started thinking about my grandparents, who had a farm and were always healthy and full of life, about what they were eating, how they were growing their own food, how they raised their own animals. I realised that I was disconnected from the sources of my food, and I had no idea what was actually in the substances presented as food in restaurants and supermarkets. I started cooking more, I started using only organic ingredients, I eliminated harmful foods, I made lifestyle changes, I used herbal medicine support and in the end my body had enough tools to put both auto-immune conditions in remission.


So what does the above have to do with my onion tea broth? It just happened that the recipe creation assignment coincided with a bout of coughing in my family, which meant it was time for my grandmother’s onion tea! That is when it dawned on me I had the perfect basis for my recipe as it was both food and medicine, nourishing and anti-inflammatory, a link to ancestral wisdom passed down through generations and a link to the future through building resilient, happy, thriving bodies and minds of children. Onion is one of the highest vegetables in quercetin, a flavonoid known to play a major role in reducing inflammation and modulating the immune system response. Onion is a known prebiotic, feeding the gut microbiome and a balanced gut microbiome is key to a healthy body and mind. Onion is an inexpensive ingredient which means it is accessible even on a restricted budget and imparts a variety of flavours to a meal depending on the method of cooking/preparing it. The humble onion has indeed numerous layers, not just physically, but also metaphorically.


So YES, it turns out onion tea broth was the perfect choice for the base of my dish. From my taste adventures through exotic cuisines I added ingredients which also moonlight as anti-inflammatory foods since the dawn of time: fresh ginger, fresh turmeric, miso paste. Good, healing fats and good quality protein were needed to complete the dish and wild, line-caught salmon popped into my mind – glazed with miso, honey and sake for that tongue titillating twist. I needed some colour to finalise my creation, because as we all know digestion actually starts with the nose (already taken care of by the beautiful smell during the caramelisation of the miso glaze) and eyes, so adding some vibrant green antioxidant-rich kale to the dish was the logical choice. And a little soft bed of rice noodles for the salmon to rest on.


And the best part? Everyone loved it, including me! My life has changed indeed and I can’t wait to start designing my next recipe.



By Daniela Dima-Riain,

Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach

CNE student


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