Traditional Homemade Pickled Onions
Traditional Homemade Pickled Onions
1h 40m
Serves 4
Directions
- 1Put all of the unpeeled onions in a large bowl and pour boiling water over them, leave to steep in the water for 1 minute, before tipping them into a colander to drain.
- 2Place the onions into the bowl again and cover them with cold water now.
- 3Peel the skins off the onions, making a small cut at the root end to ease the skins off.
- 4Once all of the onions have been peeled, layer the peeled onions with the salt in a large bowl, cover them with a clean tea towel and leave them overnight or up to 24 hours in the salt.
- 5The following day, drain and rinse the onions thoroughly, pat them dry and pack them into some clean and sterilised jars.
- 6Pour the pickling vinegar over the onions in the jars, including all the pickling spices, seal the jars and allow to mature for 4 weeks before serving.
- 7Make the spiced pickling vinegar: Pour the vinegar into a large saucepan and add the sugar and the pickling spices. Bring to the boil, then take the vinegar off the heat immediately, cover with a lid and leave to go cold and infuse for 24 hours
Ingredients
- 1 kilo small pickling onions
- 1200 ml pickling vinegar, or malt vinegar
- 50 g salt
- 200 g white sugar
- 6 teaspoons pickling spices
- 6 teaspoons mixed peppercorns, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, allspice berries, and crumbled dry bay leaves
Equipment
large bowlcolanderclean tea towelclean and sterilised jarslarge saucepan
Tips
- You can use a mixture of malt and red wine vinegar.
- Cider apple vinegar can also be used.
- Add some chilli flakes to the pickling spices for extra heat.
- Pack the onions into small jars, add a paper cover and some ribbon and give them away as gifts or as part of a food hamper.
- Other aromatic seeds can be used in homemade pickling spice, such as cumin, dill as well as cinnamon sticks and star anise.
- If you like a little heat, then you can add a couple of dried chillies to the pickling vinegar
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