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Valley Forge Onions and Apples
5. APPLES 4 BACON SLICES 4 ONIONS Cut unpeeled apples in 1/2-inch circles. Parboil onions, let them cook and then cut into similar circular slices. Fry bacon and keep it hot while you fry the apples and onions together in the bacon fat, using more fat or butter, if necessary. Drain on paper plate and serve all together. We're willing to wager there'd be less eating outdoors if God hadn't made that lovely little lily bulb called an onion. It's every camper's delight when roasted whole in the ashes, except maybe one of those snippy little hothouse feeders that ought to stay in out of the draught anyway.
A skillet dish of three ingredients that depends almost entirely on how the onions are handled before they hit the pan. The instructions run together in the original; here is what matters.
- Parboil, then cool, then sliceThe onions go into the water before they are cut; the printed "let them cook" is almost certainly "let them cool." Boil until barely tender, cool enough to handle, and only then cut into rounds. Slicing them raw first risks their falling apart into rings in the pan and never softening through. Eight to ten minutes in boiling water suits a medium onion.
- Apple choiceUnpeeled rings need an apple that holds its shape: Braeburn, Granny Smith, Jonagold. A soft eating apple collapses into sauce in bacon fat. Core the rings with a small cutter or a paring knife before frying.
- QuantitiesFour bacon slices and four onions are stated. The apple count is unclear as printed; one apple per onion gives a balanced pan, and four medium apples cut in half-inch rings will roughly match four sliced onions.
- FatFour rashers render perhaps two tablespoons of fat, which is not enough for two pans of frying. Have butter or additional bacon fat ready, as the recipe suggests, and add it when the pan goes dry rather than after the apples have caught.
- Heat and orderMedium heat rather than a fierce fire. Apples and onions both want browning without scorching, and both need turning once. Eight to ten minutes total is about right.
- DrainingA paper plate absorbs bacon fat well enough over a fire, but the rings sit in what they shed and go limp. Drain briefly and serve at once.
- YieldServes four as a side, or two as the whole of a camp supper with bread.
- The onion in the ashesThe closing note describes a separate method worth knowing: a whole unpeeled onion buried in hot wood ash for 45 minutes to an hour steams inside its own skin. Skins go black; the interior is sweet and soft.