Want to make your own pickled onions but are not sure what onions are the best for pickling? Then this is the article for you, let’s have a look and find out!
What Are The Best Onions For Pickling?
You can use lots of onion varieties for pickling as long as you pick them very young. This does not mean that there are not some varieties that are better than others, so what are these varieties?
Bedfordshire Champion
This is usually grown as a full-sized brown onion but can be harvested early and used as a pickling onion. It is really popular as both a regular and pickling onion.
Silverskin (Onion De Paris)
The classic pickling onion and usually what you will find in a jar of pickled onions from the supermarket.
Readily available online as a packet of seeds this onion is really easy to grow and makes the perfect pickled onion.
Spring Onion Pompeii
As the name would suggest this is a spring onion but it actually forms a small but round bulb and makes a great pickled onion.
How To Grow Pickled Onions
You can module sow and transplant or direct sow pickling onions it really doesn’t matter much. I always module sow my onions as I just seem to have more success that way but many people will tell you that direct sowing works really well for them.
If sowing in rows sow thinly but space your rows quite close, remember these are never going to be large onions so we really need to pack them in. I leave 10cm between rows when I transplant my module sown onions in.
When I module sow my pickling onions (silverskins is what I normally plant) I actually multi sow then, that is I sow a few plants per module and then don’t thin them.
I plant the whole module out as if it is one plant. The onions grow just fine this way and push each other apart as they start to swell up.
How To Pickle Onions
So once you have grown your onions comes the fun part, pickling them. Make sure you use up the stems and don’t throw them away, they work just like spring onions when chopped up, this goes for all onions.
Wash and clean the onions and then cut the bulbs off so we don’t have any roots or stem left. I like to peel the outer layer of the onion off too as this is normally quite a tough layer.
To help you peel these little onions it is advised to give them a quick soak in really hot water, pour boiling kettle water into a bowl and then let the onions sit in this for a while, roughly 30 seconds then transfer to a collider and pour some cold tap water over them to cool them off.
This just makes peeling the onions a lot easier.
Once done move them into a bowl and sprinkle some salt onto the onions, you then want to put this bowl in the fridge and leave for 24 hours.
After that, it is time to prepare our pickling vinegar. You can just use pure vinegar, pour it into a sterilised jar and add the onions and you are done. But there are much better recipes out there for making a good pickle juice.
You can experiment and make your own, some people love adding chills, peppercorns, mustard seeds and more. So have a look around google and find a recipe you like the sound of!