Pickled Onions

I love pickled onions. Which is weird, because I hate onions. With a passion. But just try keeping me away from pickled onions. I have, however, been disappointed with the quality of the jarred pickled onions in the supermarket of late, and when I saw pickling onions at the market the other day, I thought I'd better have a go.

So, in the interests of full disclosure, I did not actually grow these onions, but they are from the fruit and veg market at the Vic.

This jar I bought in Kmart for around $8, the obviously saw me coming since I later bought a similar sized jar I intend to make another batch in for around $2 at the local $2 shop.

Anyway, first things first, since I only had the one large jar, I figured a good place to start was with finding out how many onions would fit in the jar. I bought around 3kg of pickling onions, because they were cheap cheap cheap and, as I already might have mentioned, I love pickled onions! As it turns out, approximately 1kg or so fit in the jar.

Once the onions had been peeled and top and tailed, which was a laborious job I managed to acheive whilst supervising the tomato relish, they were left to soak in a bowl of brine overnight. I made the brine by heating water and a handful of salt until the salt had dissolved, then allowing to cool before adding the onions.

In the meantime, I prepared the pickling vinegar. Into plain white vinegar I put a tablespoon each of coriander seeds, cloves and cardamom seeds, a couple of cinnamon sticks and a few bay leaves, and brought it to the boil. The vinegar was then left to steep for about five hours, before being sieved off and stored overnight until the onions were ready to bottle.

The next day, I drained the brine off the onions, and rinsed them well, then laid them out on a paper towel to dry off. When they were dry, I put them into the sterilised jar, and discovered that I could have fit a few more in, once I had removed the peel and ends. Not to worry.

I then sieved the vinegar again to remove all the gunk that had settled to the bottom overnight, mostly clove dust as far as I could make out, then poured into the jar over the onions. I folded up a bit of greaseproof paper and stuffed it in the top of the jar to stop the onions floating, at least for the next couple of days until they have absorbed enough vinegar to stay submerged.

These will be ready to eat in around three weeks, but I'm intending to leave them a little longer than that.