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Parsley Onions
Select the desired number of silver skin onions, medium size. Peel and cover with boiling water, bring to boiling point, boil five minutes. Drain and cover again with boiling salted water. Cook until tender, drain and remove to serving dish. Melt one-third cup butter (for one dozen onions) in same sauce-pan, add one teaspoon finely chopped parsley. Pour butter over onions and sprinkle with black pepper.
A straightforward buttered onion side dish from a December Sunday menu. The only technical wrinkle is the double boil, which is worth understanding before you skip it.
- The first five-minute boilBlanching in plain water and discarding it draws off the harsh sulphur compounds, so the finished onions taste sweet rather than sharp. Do not carry the first water over into the second cooking — that is the whole point of the step.
- Silver skin onionsThese are the small white boiling onions, not the papery yellow storage onion. Look for white boiling onions about 1 to 1.5 inches across; frozen peeled pearl onions will work but cook in a fraction of the time.
- PeelingLeave the root plate intact when peeling, or the layers tend to slide apart in the pot.
- How long is tenderFresh boiling onions of this size need roughly 15 to 25 minutes in the second water, depending on diameter. Test with a thin skewer at the centre rather than the outer layers.
- The butter quantityA third of a cup is about 5 tablespoons for a dozen onions, which is generous by current habits. Half that amount coats them perfectly well if you want the onion to lead.
- SaltingThe recipe salts only the second water and never the butter. Season the butter as well, or the dish reads flat — the salted water mostly seasons the outer layer.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work; add it to the melted butter off the heat so it stays green rather than frying in the pan.
- YieldOne dozen onions serves about four as a side dish alongside a roast.
Boiled onions in butter were a fixed part of the American winter table well into the twentieth century, and they turn up in Sunday-dinner and holiday menus for a simple reason: onions kept in the cellar from autumn through spring, when almost no other fresh vegetable did. "Silver skin" referred to the small white varieties grown for boiling and pickling. A preliminary boil in plain water before finishing in salted water appears in cookbooks of the period as a way of taming the strength of a stored onion.