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.
For texture you could use finely chopped celery.
That’s a no-no unfortunately. She’s allergic to celery (replacing this with parsnip already). But I haven’t thought about finely chopping it for texture!
For a really powerful celery alternative, look into lovage. It’s a perennial relative of parsley and celery. A single leaf of lovage tastes like a whole stalk of celery. It is really good in things like soups. Depending on where you live, it might be hard to find, but it is easy to grow.
Nice. Had to look up a translation, but I can absolutely get that here. Never cooked with it. Thanks for the tip!