Alison took this photo of an Sad Onion in my giant pickling jar. By some fluke the pickling spices formed a face on the onion, strange as I don’t think of onions as being sad to be pickled, perhaps it’s all those tears shed in peeling them?
When I make pickled onions I need a good supply of small onions. I use English cooking onions and keep an eye out for bags of small ones which happens now and then. It’s a good way of using up onions that are a bit too small for anything else and it can be very cheap to make as a 1.5kg bag of small cooking onions is often less than a pound. Before putting the onions in vinegar I wet brine them in a salt solution using about 2oz of salt to a pint of water and leave to soak for at least 24hours.
Once drained and dried I pop the onions into vinegar (malt vinegar of at least 5% acidity) and I have a giant jar for this purpose. As the onions are often quite large for pickling they need to be soaked for a few weeks before they are ready and I add the pickling spices to the vinegar and oniona in the jar. It’s a bit variable but I normally throw in mustard seeds, peppercorns, a few cloves, part of a crushed stick of cinnamon or whatever is in the spice cupboard.
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