The Viral TikTok Onion Boil You'll Need A Breath Mint After Eating

What makes a cooking trend go viral on TikTok? Only the algorithm knows. Cottage cheese ice cream, is, uh, healthy (and less terrible than you'd think), while cucumber salads may be popular because they're so easy to make. The onion boil recipes that seem to be ubiquitous in the fall of 2024 are also pretty simple — details vary, but the basics are just adding butter/oil and spices to a whole peeled onion, wrapping in foil, and baking until soft.

The onion boil recipe may not be complicated, but it sure is mysterious. For one thing, how do you prepare such a dish on camera without tearing up and having to blow your nose multiple times? Even more baffling, why is it called an onion boil if there's no boiling involved? Sorry, we have no answer for this, although if we had to guess, we'd say it might have something to do with how baked onions release a lot of moisture to the point where they essentially steam cook while sitting in a puddle of their own juices. Still not boiling, though, since this cooking method requires immersion in liquid. Another theory about the confusing nomenclature suggests that it might have something to do with the spices because some recipes call for seasonings similar to those you might see in a seafood boil.

Just as there's no crying in baseball, so, too, is there no crying in TikTok cooking videos, which must be pretty hard on anyone whose recipe involves onions. Unless they're using sweet onions, which is the case with most onion boils. The onion of choice seems to be the Vidalia since these sweet onions have less of the pain-making chemical called pyruvic acid.

Vidalia onions, which are a variety of sweet yellow onions grown in a specific area of Georgia (the state, not the country), don't have a monopoly on sweetness. There are several other onion varieties that could also be used to make an onion boil without affecting the flavor to any great extent, including Maui onions from Hawaii, Texas 1015s, which hail from the Lone Star state, and Walla Walla Sweets, which come from Washington (the state, not the District of Columbia). If you prefer a really oniony-tasting onion, however, and you don't mind suffering a bit of eye pain (or possess a pair of onion goggles), you could also opt to use a yellow, white, or red onion.

As with just about any other onion recipe, you'll begin your onion boil by peeling the vegetable. If you stick with a low-pyruvic pick, you shouldn't shed too many tears over the process, but you could always try sticking a piece of bread in your mouth to reduce any onion-chopping pain (Warning: Your mileage may vary). Once the onion is peeled, you can cut a cylindrical hole in the middle using an apple corer or sharp knife, although this step isn't included in the original TikTok recipe (see below). If you do make this well in your onion, however, it's a good spot to keep the seasoned butter.

You can stir your spices of choice into either softened or melted butter. Store-bought seasoning blends like Cajun or Old Bay are popular, while you can also do a DIY blend with parsley, paprika, garlic, cayenne, black pepper, or any other spices that suit your fancy (might we suggest DIY Doritos seasoning powder?). Stuff the seasoned butter into the onion hole, or simply smear or pour it over the top if you can't be bothered to cut one. Wrap the buttered onion in foil, then bake it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour.

Onions have been around for over 5,000 years and feature in some of the world's oldest recipes. If the onion boil as we now know it actually involved boiled onions, we might credit an ancient Mesopotamian influencer for the idea. Baked onions, too, are pretty well-established, with one super-simple recipe (you don't even have to peel the onions!) dating back to 1808. Julia Child is also said to have been fond of onions roasted whole. The current onion boil trend, however, is thought to have kicked off in June 2024 with a video posted by TikTok user @doll_mimi.

To give the creator their due, they do not refer to the recipe as an onion boil in this cooking video, but instead call it what it is: baked onions. In fact, they reinforce this notion by using the hashtag #bakedonion, while they also give a nod to their chosen baking appliance by tagging the video #airfryerrecipes. The onions from their recipe aren't cored or wrapped in foil, nor do they involve seafood boil spices but are instead seasoned with garlic salt, pepper, and turmeric.

@doll_mimi

WELCOME TO THE WHOLESOME SIDE OF TIKTOK! Follow to join the Aura community! #rawonion #bakedonion #atpeace #solitude #feelgood #easyrecipes #bakingrecipe #airfryerrecipes

♬ Lofi/Fashionable/Rose Piano/10 minutes(1455693) – nightbird_bgm

Once the original video went viral with over 40,000 likes, other TikTok cooks took the concept and ran with it. Not only did they add their own twists, but somewhere along the line they also started calling it an onion boil instead of a bake. In a follow-up video posted in July, @doll_mimi seems to have adopted the term as well, thus entering it into the canon.

If you're an outdoor cooking aficionado, you may want to use your grill as an oven alternative for this viral recipe. The way to make a grilled onion boil (oxymoronic though this may seem) is to follow the same steps as you would to make a baked one, then put the foil-wrapped onion on the grates of a pre-heated grill. (If you have a spare half-onion, you can even use it to clean the grill). For a propane grill, the desired heat setting is again 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You'll want to cook your onion over indirect heat — on a propane grill, this means turning off the burner under where it's sitting. If you're cooking with charcoal, pile the briquettes on the side opposite the onion. A grilled onion, like an oven-baked one, should be done in about an hour.

You can also cook your onion in the air fryer, just like the creator of the first viral onion boil video. In this case, you can dispense with the foil and expect the onion to be done in about half an hour. Without the extra protection, though, the outer layer might get kind of crispy. If this bothers you, you can always peel it off.

Whether you bake it, grill, or air-fry it, an onion boil is basically just a cooked onion with seasoned butter. Most of the TikTokers making them seem to think they're the greatest thing since self-peeling onions, so perhaps they're not wrong. If you like onion soup, onion rings, and all things onion, there's a good chance you'll enjoy oven-steamed onions, as well. If you're not an onion super-fan, though, you might require a few extra ingredients to up the ante. Enter the cheesy onion boil –- it's the same thing, only right at the end, you top the onion with your grated cheese of choice and cook it for a few more minutes until the cheese melts.

Some people also like to pair their onion boils with boiled eggs. Presumably, these eggs are boiled in the traditional way, but as baked eggs are also a thing, there's no reason you couldn't just crack an egg into your onion core (you may have to expand the hole a bit) and bake it that way. An onion core can also be filled with other ingredients such as creamy sauces, seasoned ground meat, or rice. One Greek dish, salantourmasi, uses rice and tomatoes as a filling for baked onions, while Lebanese stuffed onions are filled with rice and ground lamb. We don't know exactly when either dish was created, but online recipes for both predate the TikTok era.

So what made the onion boil blow up big in 2024? TikTok works in mysterious ways (it's pretty much its own ecosystem at this point), so undoubtedly the platform had a lot to do with the original video's popularity. Unlike some other viral recipes, however, the onion boil is pretty approachable. All you really need to make it is an onion, some butter, and whatever's in your spice cabinet, and most, if not all, of the steps involved — whether or not to core it or wrap it in foil, plus the choice of spices and cooking method — are left to the cook's discretion.

Onions are also pretty healthy, especially when they're not batter-dipped and fried. Okay, if you insist on cramming in an entire stick of butter, you may negate the onion boil's health benefits to some extent, but the Vidalia onion itself will net you 15% of your daily vitamin C and about 10% of your daily fiber. An onion itself only has about 60 calories, too, although butter adds an additional 100 per tablespoon. Probably one of the main reasons the onion boil caught on with TikTok users, though, is because onion plus butter plus spices is quite a tasty combo. It's got the same comfort food appeal as onion soup but requires a lot less effort and fewer ingredients.