Back on Monday we harvested the last onions from the plot. Since then they’ve been sitting in a vegetable bucket waiting for us to gather together everything that we needed to pickle them.
Now that we have everything, we’ve done the deed.
It’s actually very simple, although it takes a little bit of time and forward planning. In short, you need to do it over two days.
Day One
Peel your onions. This is the time consuming bit. You need to chop off the tops and take off the brown papery skins to leave just the greeny white insides. You should also carefully slice off the roots at the base, but be careful not to cut into the actual onion here. You want to leave enough of the base in tact to hold the onion together when it’s in the jar.
Put these into a large pan and cover with a mixture of salt and water.
In another pan you need to make up a brine mixture. Start by pouring 250g of salt into two litres of water and stirring well so that it is fully dissolved. Pour this over the onions and, if it doesn’t cover them, make up some more water in the same proportions (try a further one litre of water with 125g of salt).
When there is sufficient brine mixture to cover all of the onions, put a couple of plates on top of them to keep them under the water and leave them for 24 hours. This helps to dry them a little by drawing out some of the onions’ natural juices.
Day Two
Remove the onions from the brine after 24 hours. Don’t leave them any longer or they will start to go soft. Rinse them well and then dry them (they really do need to be as dry as you can get them) and then put them in the jars you want to use to store them.
As with jam making, these jars must be sterilised first. We do this by putting them through a hot wash in the dishwasher, but you can also put them in the oven turned up to 100 degrees Celsius and then, when it has reached temperature, turn off the oven and leave them to cool slowly and naturally.
With the onions now in the jars, cover them with malt vinegar, ensuring that the vinegar comes right up to cover the onions and then seal them. Leave for a few weeks before eating.
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thank u very much for how t pickle your own onions my husband does it every time & i cant eat them as they have gone brown