Seasonal Recipe

Traditional crunchy pickled onions

The proper way, made with Ede's pickling liquor from Plymouth — a name that's been on Devon and Cornwall shelves since 1880. This is the batch recipe for one 5kg net of English pickling onions, which fills around fifteen 1lb jars. Make them this week and they'll be ready by the end of October, and at their very best on Christmas Eve. Scale it down if you just want a jar or two: a pound of onions needs a rounded tablespoon of salt and about 270ml of liquor.

Ingredients

• 5kg English pickling onions (one net)
• 250g salt, fine or flaked, not iodised
• 2.5 to 3 litres Ede's pickling liquor — dark for the traditional amber finish, clear if you want nothing stained, or ready spiced to skip the next ingredient
• 5 to 6 tbsp pickling spice, if you're not using ready spiced
• Chillies to taste — see the cook's notes below
• 1 tsp peppercorns per jar, optional. Black and white for flavour, pink and green for looks
• 2 tbsp sugar, optional, for a rounder and less austere pickle

Method

1. Top and tail the onions, cover with boiling water, count to sixty, then drain and plunge into cold water. The skins will slip off between your fingers. Don't leave them any longer in the hot water or you'll start to cook them. Allow a good ninety minutes for a full net, and get someone else on topping and tailing.
2. Layer the peeled onions with the salt in a large bowl or bucket, cover, and leave for 24 hours. Liquid will pool in the bottom — that's the water coming out of the onions, and it's the single thing that makes the difference between a crunchy pickle and a limp one.
3. Rinse thoroughly under cold running water, more thoroughly than feels necessary, then pat properly dry. Lazy rinsing gives you a salty pickle.
4. Pack into clean, sterilised jars, tight but not crushed. Tuck the chillies, spice and peppercorns in between the onions as you go rather than tipping them all in the bottom.
5. Pour the liquor over straight from the bottle, cold, until every onion is submerged with a centimetre to spare. Never heat it — hot liquor cooks the onions soft. Seal with a vinegar-proof lid.
6. Store somewhere cool and dark. Check after a week and top up any jar where the onions have settled and left a shoulder exposed.
7. Wait. Six weeks is the minimum. Three months and they're right.

Cook's notes

• Dutch or jalapeño: one or two per jar, split lengthways. Warmth rather than heat.
• Thai: one per jar, left whole. Two if you mean it.
• Habanero or Scotch bonnet: half a chilli per jar, and wash your hands before you touch your face. Three months is a long time for a chilli to steep, and a whole one will take over the jar.
• Mind the lids: bare metal corrodes on contact with pickling liquor and will taint the whole jar. Use plastic-coated lids or Kilner-style jars with a rubber seal.
• Don't open them early: at three weeks they're raw and harsh. Label each jar with the date you made it and leave it alone.
• Beyond onions: the same method works for beetroot, cauliflower, red cabbage and hard-boiled eggs. Use the clear liquor for those, as the dark one stains.
• Making them as presents? A jar needs to be ready by the day rather than on it, so start by the middle of November at the very latest.

Everything you need is right here at Roots & Vines — English pickling onions loose or in 5kg nets, all three Ede's pickling liquors, Green Cuisine pickling spice, chillies from mild to fierce, and peppercorns in black, white, pink and green, all available in the shop and through our online store.