You could reach straight for the knife to whip off the brown skins but, for a more precise and easy peel, first soak them for five minutes in a bowl of boiling water and rinse until cool enough to handle. I can’t test it out myself as I can’t take onions or vinegar although of course I do make and sell chutneys that are sweet so I might try some sweet pickled onions just to see. Cracking open a jar of my pickled onions has become a Christmas day tradition, as ritualistic as the pulling of crackers, the flambéing of Christmas pudding and the opening of a bottle of strong, dark beer as soon as breakfast has settled. Trim the bare minimum from the tops and bottoms (excess trimming could cause more layers to slip off) and the skins should peel away with ease.

Garners Original Pickled Onions 454G - Tesco Groceries Garners Original Pickled Onions 454G - Tesco Groceries

Fill with the pickling vinegar, including the spices (although I always remove the bay leaf), until the onions are covered. they are ready to eat, I give mine a minimum of one week with a recommendation that they should be kept a bit longer before eating them But I don’t have the space to keep them for 6 weeks! Now roll your bald onions in salt and leave in a bowl overnight, rinsing the salt away in the morning before patting dry. Gently heat the vinegar and spices for five to ten minutes (don’t let it boil), stirring to dissolve the sugar, then set aside to cool.

You’ll need roughly an equal volume of water to weight of onions – ie 100ml vinegar for every 100g of onions.

How to pickle onions - Two Thirsty Gardeners How to pickle onions - Two Thirsty Gardeners

Our verdicts and advice are our own personal opinions and are always written by us, no matter how much PR companies might try to persuade us otherwise. Again, we will only accept fees from companies that offer something relevant to our audience (so no gambling links, for example). Although this stage is optional, the salt-and-rinse method will extract moisture from within the onion and you will be rewarded with a crisper, crunchier, firmer pickle in the long run. I use a mix of spices and although I always put some in the jars there are usually quite a few left over.

We only feature such items if we genuinely think they’re of interest or benefit to our readers and, as a result, turn down more requests than we include. Place the onions into the jar leaving as little space between them as possible (think like a dry-stone-waller and build layers of onions according to size and shape). I can’t see why it wouldn’t work, perhaps topped up with a few more ingredients, but perhaps someone else can tell us if it’s worth doing or not? I’ve only been growing my own since 2020 and am about to try pickling onions and shallots for the first time, hence my visit to this site. While it’s true that his gherkins are firm, knobbly and sour enough to make a chef blush, I much prefer to grow and pickle onions, believing that no vegetable tastes as good after a prolonged bath in vinegar than the princely edible allium.