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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Onions

Pickled Onions. To prepare onions for pickling, "top and tail" them, remove the outer skins and steep them in brine for a period of two or three days, to two weeks or more.

Afterwards freshen them in clear water for a period of one to three days.

Or if preferred, boil them in clear water or brine for ten or fifteen minutes. Afterwards pack them in widemouthed glass bottles or jars, and cover with pure vinegar or spiced pickling liquid scalding hot or cold.

When cold seal for use. The addition of a spoonful of olive oil to each hottle is said to keep the onions white. Cork tightly and cover the corks with bottle wax or melted paraffin. Seal with cotton batting.

To Select Pickling Onions. Choose for pickling small silver-skin button onions, preferably of uniform size.

Gather them when they are quite dry and ripe and pick them over carefully, rejecting any that are soft, unripe, or spotted. To Pickle Onions Cold. - Place the onions in a clean, dry glass bottle or jar, cover them with cold vinegar and add mixed spices as preferred. Add a little mustard seed, mace, and capsicum, or allspice and black pepper unground or grated, or sliced horseradish or garlic, capsicum and paprika, if desired. Seal the bottle and let stand two or three weeks before using. Onions are very easily pickled in this way and have an exquisite flavor, but will not keep more than about six or eight months.