This red wine with purple onion is said to be good for hearts, for reducing arterial lipids and for softening blood vessels. I first heard of these sayings from causal chats, from emails forwarded to me, and then from friends’ personal recommendations. On the day I was ready to prepare this drink, I also read an article (in Chinese) on the Apple Daily News mentioning the same, and seemingly endorsing me to share this recipe. The author of that article also wrote about A Soup for Preventing Flu
In only two steps and a couple of minutes, this drink can be done. But wait, for the best effects, it should not be drunk on the first 7 days. If the wine looks so irresistible, let me propose to make only half portion of this recipe and enjoy the remaining bottle (this was what I did actually).
- Ingredients
- 1 bottle 750ml red wine
- 2 each of purple onion
Method
Remove the outer membrane and cut away both ends of the onions, rinse them, cut each into 8 wedges. Pat dry. Load them into a container (I suppose it is better to have a sterilized glass container), and pour in the wine.
Seal the container, store it in a cool dark area for a week. Remove the onions from wine on the 8th day, and store the whole container in fridge. You may then start enjoy 50ml per night from then onward.
To cut onions without ‘crying’, try this tip in my previous post.
Be prepared, the wine with onions soaked in it for so many days will offer a strong garlicky flavor. Indeed, the very first sip of the drink did not please me. It took me quite a while to get used to the smell, but what I am sure now is that I will go for the second, third … bottles of this as hubby has gladly grabbed every 50ml of his.
- Category: Vegetable .
- 27 comments
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Strange but interesting. Red wine is good for you, Onions are good for you = putting the two together is a novel idea! I must admit, I’m a bit scared to drink it. Cook with it – yes
I’d like to try, but is it for real that it helps arterial lipids? LOL
@Kitchen Butterfly, You may like it if you try.
@KennyT, I should have quoted from the author, ‘ … among friends, there is a record of lowered cholesterol level in a month … ‘ . Correct me if I’m wrong, my interpretation is that lowered cholesterol is somehow related to reduced arterial lipids. If you are interested in reading the original article, just click on the link ‘(in Chinese)’, of which I have just added above. Enjoy your red wine with onions!
I am not sure if I will drink it but chinese herbal usually taste really bad and good for us.
Interesting! I recently read somewhere that eating 1/2 of any raw onion a day can bring one’s bad cholesterol (LDL) down by 25% in two weeks. I don’t know if that’s true, but apparently onions do have some very good qualities when it comes to arterial fats! I might have to try this…
How interesting! I love red wine and onions! But the combination of these two in a glass…I am totally intrigued!
Great informative recipe! It’s peeked my interest I think I will do more research on it.
That looks and sounds definitely new to me!
Je ne connaissais pas du tout.
C’est très intéressant.
See soon.
@Nadjibella, I do mean to read every comment to me word by word. Yet I know no French; so if all possible I would appreciate it if you could write to me in English, big thanks.
I’ve never heard of it before, sounds really intriguing and I would love to try it one day
Interesting…I love wine, but don’t know if could take it with onion…even the red on
Wow. Red wine and red onion?? That is incredible! I have never heard of such a thing, but it sounds worth trying, particularly because of its health benefits. Thank you for sharing!
This is new and interesting to me. I’ve heard of the health benefits of red wine but not with red onions. Thanks very much for the info. I always add red wine to make soup and it’s very warming.
wow that’s so interesting. i’ve never heard of adding red onion to red wine to increase the health benefits. i should try it sometime… but i’m sure it’ll be very weird at first.
I bet this would be fab with pork. Yum!
How about white onions, will they work? Does this recipe help with sleeplessness?
@King Yu,
In the first email I learned about this, it simply advised the use of onion without specifying which type. Perhaps red onion is later recommended by more people because it is sweeter and less garlicky than the white ones when eating raw, but this is my guess only. Sleeplessness? I’m afraid the original recipe haven’t mentioned this. Unless you are not suitable for drinking wine, I believe the best answer is to give it a try. Enjoy!
Thanks for the recipe. I just fermented it for 8 days and drank my 1st 50ml few minutes ago. Taste isn’t too bad. Let’s see how I feel tomorrow, whether I’ll sleep well tonight and whether I will feel extra fresh tomorrow. Again thanks!
@YL,
You are welcome. I suppose taking this drink as a healing agent shall undergo a continual process. If you read Chinese, you may find in the link to a news clipping above, ‘article (in Chinese)’, suggested that it takes one of the columnist’s friends A MONTH to record a lowered cholesterol level. But I shall be happy to hear from you any time you find it convenient. Enjoy your red wine!
I highly recommend this healing drink. I recently learned about the recipe and couldn’t wait for a minute to give it a try. I’m now into my second week of drinking it, and amazingly, my dry eyes and blurred vision problems have gotten improved significantly(as promised by the original recipe). I also noticed that my knees seem to be stronger and more flexible when I walk up and down stairs. My LDL always clings on the higher borderline and I hope to see it drop down to a more satisfactory level by continue taking it for a while. There are several other claimed healing effects from drinking this “magic potion”, that can only be proved from blood test results. I’ll wait for a couple months to find out more about it until my next annual check up appointment. If anyone out there can read Chinese, below is a worth reading article for your reference regarding this onion wine. If not, let Google Translate help you get a glimpse of it. Good luck! http://www.cbooks.org/alan/onion.htm
@Lisa L,
Many thanks for sharing your experience, and I hope more people could benefit from reading all these references. Also thanks for the link; I have emails forwarded to me containing similar information, and yours is one of the most detailed.
Take care!
One on my chinese fried tried it for 7 days now and apparently it starts working from 4th day to overcome with Insomnia.
@Behrooz,
Thanks for writing to share your friend’s experience. I believe this could also be served as a reference.
[...] columnists, Yim Ho ?? (a film director who also writes articles and books on healing recipes like this and this), suggesting that we should drink more water during summer to replenish the loses through [...]
Do you also eat the red onions?
@jeffrey,
I only tried out a small amount. According to the author, you may randomly eat the purple onion on a daily basis.