Store onions in a cool dry place and out of direct sunlight. The humidity in most home refrigerators is too high for onions, so it’s best to store them out of the refrigerator. Do your best to keep an eye on your onions. If you notice them starting to sprout or form a bad spot…use them! You can also chop your onions however you are most likely to use them in the future and put them in a freezer bag in your freezer. Pull them out and use them throughout the winter!
Storage onions are varieties grown to produce an onion that has the ability to hold in long-term storage for 9-12 months. These varieties are usually “tear jerkers” and are much stronger and more pungent than our early varieties. While they have natural sugars that come out when cooked, the chemical makeup of the onion and lower sugar concentrations are what help keep storage onions in good quality during long storage.
Onions may be included in a wide variety of ways in our day to day eating and cooking. Raw onions are delicious on sandwiches and salads and play an important role in fresh salsa and sauces. One of the important keys to an enjoyable dining experience with raw onions is to slice them very thinly. I repeat…slice them thinly. You want to get the flavor of the onion with each bite, but you don’t want that to be the flavor that dominates each bite. If the piece of onion is too thick, that’s all you taste and it can throw off the balance. I love thinly sliced onions on grilled burgers, Italian sandwiches with salami, added to a Greek salad along with tomatoes, olives, and romaine lettuce, or simply served with slices of oranges drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper for a super simple winter salad.
Thinly sliced onions are important when cooking onions too. There are several ways to cook onions. You can sweat them which means you cook them at a moderately low temperature with the intention of gently cooking the onion to soften the texture, but you don’t want them to brown or get any color. As you are cooking onions in this manner, you’ll notice the steam rolling off the pan. This is the moisture coming out of (or sweating if you will) the onions. If you patiently continue this process, you can caramelize an onion. Basically you will sweat most of the water out of the onion which will concentrate the natural sugars left behind. When you do this, the onions will significantly decrease in volume and will turn to a golden brown color and be sweet and delicious. Onions are also delicious when roasted, grilled, and fried. In general, onions are more mild in flavor when cooked. The sulfur compounds in onions are what make an onion pungent and what causes us to cry while cutting them. When you cut into an onion and release these compounds they dissipate into the air.
If you accumulate a large pile of onions, take the opportunity to try making something that requires a larger volume such as French Onion soup or an onion marmalade.
Cultural & Historical Background: Onions are used as the base of cooking all around the world and are revered for their role as an “aromatic”. In French cooking, they are part of traditional mirepoix, a blend of diced carrots, celery and onion that is an important base for making stock and soups. In Spanish cuisine, onions are included in their version of “mirepoix” which is called sofrito and includes tomatoes, onions and garlic. Chinese cuisine starts each dish with garlic, onion and ginger, their own kind of “mirepoix.”
While onions are often in the background providing the supporting role, they can also be found as a main, more prominent ingredient. For example, there is a traditional dish from the Provence region of France called pissaladiére. It is a tart of sorts featuring caramelized onion, olives, garlic and anchovies. Of course there is French Onion soup, a delicious brothy soup that requires copious amounts of onions. Pipperade is a mixture of onions, peppers and tomatoes that originated in the Basque region of Spain. It may be eaten as a main item or used as a condiment. I suppose in America we would boast French Onion Dip and Onion Rings?
Growing Information: Onions are a challenge to grow in that they grow slow and their tops are poor competitors against weeds. Also, they are vulnerable to the tiny onion thrip, a natural pest enemy which sucks on onion tops deep in the center and leaves holes for disease spores to enter the onion as they kill the top and hence stop the onion development. Commercial, conventional onions are all treated with systemic insecticide, a neonicotinoid which has its own severe problems.
Onions respond well to regular watering, but can quickly suffer from too much water. Twenty-five years ago, when we grew onions on bare ground, we would harvest good looking onions to dry in the greenhouse, only to find later that many had “soft rot” in the center or a soft layer somewhere in the rings. Our investigations led us to understand that the bad layer was the result of an earlier wet weather event in the field. The neck rot was due to damage caused by the thrips that created an entry point into the onion for the bacteria that causes soft rot.
So we decided we needed a new strategy. We transitioned to a system of transplanting 4 rows of onions on a raised bed, covered with plastic mulch that has a shiny, reflective surface that almost totally keeps thrips away by disorienting them! The raised bed drains off excess water quickly, but the buried drip tape under the bed allows us to water and feed onions at their roots.
Additional Fun Facts: We firmly believe that daily consumption of plants in the onion/garlic family is one key to good health and they are a staple ingredient that we, and many other families, include in our daily meals. Thus, we plan to include an onion and/or garlic selection of some sort in every CSA box over the course of our thirty week season.
The size of an onion is determined by how thick or thin we seed them in the greenhouse. Single onions can easily reach 1# each!
