Ever spotted shallots at the grocery store or farmers market and wondered what to do with them? Shallots are simply a milder, more delicate version of an onion — and once you know how to prep them, they’ll become a go-to ingredient in your real food kitchen, especially for homemade dressings and salads.
What You’ll Need
- A chef’s knife
- A cutting board
Shallot vs. Onion — What’s the Difference?
Shallots look like a small, elongated onion with a coppery-pink skin. They have a milder, slightly sweeter flavor than white onions, which makes them ideal for raw applications like vinaigrettes and salad dressings where a sharp onion taste would be too overpowering. That said, they are completely interchangeable with white onions in cooked dishes.
How to Peel a Shallot
Just like an onion! Trim a thin slice off one end to create a flat base, then score the outer skin and peel it away. The layers come off easily.
How to Slice or Dice a Shallot
- Sliced: Halve the shallot lengthwise and slice into thin half-moons
- Finely diced: After halving, make a series of lengthwise cuts, then crosscut into small pieces — perfect for dressings
Video Transcript
“So, this is a shallot. Very similar to an onion — it’s just a milder onion. So when it comes to shallots, this will look very similar to what we do with the onion. Normally I will cut it like this just to kind of get that outer layer easier to peel off. And so, just like you did with the onion, you peel this off. With a shallot, a lot of times you’re going to be really finely dicing it because you’re adding it to a dressing, that kind of thing. So just depending on if you want it sliced or if you want it diced. Then I would just take these and kind of chop them up like this. And then they can be super finely diced and you can add them to dressings or to your salad or however you want to use them. But they are very interchangeable with a regular white onion.”