Pickled Onions - Part 1

Some of the onions didn't grow much - barely worth the effort of peeling, slicing and cooking - so decided to pickle them! And they are the perfect size too!

We have some red and some yellow, so we're going to pickle some of each. Having looked at various pickled onion recipies, we're going to pickle some in pickling vinegar and some in malt vinegar with a mix of spices.

We topped, tailed and peeled the first batch of onions and put the in a bowl of salty water, using a small plate to push the onions below the water. The salty water apparently helps to partially separate the layers in the onions, which helps to let the pickling spices penetrate the whole onion. We left them there for 24 hours before rinsing and drying them.

Once dry, we put the onions into two jars. We re-use old jars rather than buying new: we don't like waste, old jars are perfectly fine so long as they're cleaned and sterilised. One jar is an Uncle Ben's jar, the other was a Sainsbury's jam jar - we chose these as they were the right size for all the onions we'd prepared. Both were washed in the dishwasher and then sterilised with some boiling water. We then packed the onions into the two jars.

For the first batch of onions, we chose to use Sarson's pickling vinegar, partially because it's one of those on the list to try, and partially to save time on preparation. We poured the pickling vinegar in to the jars, filling both to the top, then put the lids on. Job done! And here they are:

These will stay in the cupboard for a couple of months or so before we try them. We'll do the next batch soon ...