We always have a jar of pickled onions in our fridge, they're an essential part of most meals involving a sandwich. We're partial to anything from a small silverskin to a whopping spicy golf ball sized pickle.

Pickling onions have been available in the shops for several weeks now, so it's time to get the goggles out, put a piece of bread in your mouth and start peeling.

The first batch I'll make this year is a reasonably quick process, where the peeked onions are sprinkled with salt and left overnight, rather than the more traditional method of soaking in brine. Both of these processes remove some of the water from the onions, which can dilute the vinegar in the jar reducing the shelf life.

You can buy ready spiced pickling vinegar, but it's easy to make your own and you can choose how to flavour it. Which spices to use is a matter of taste and opinion, I've not gone too hot with this recipe, but most recipes call for variations on the following: coriander, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, bay leaves and black pepper. I've added some garam marsala (whole, not ground as this would make the vinegar cloudy), which also contains cumin seeds, black, brown, & green cardamom and star anise.

The basic recipe is taken from the River Cottage Handbook No.2: Preserves.

See here for the pickled onion recipe.

Recipe Costs

£2.00 1.5kg pickling onions
£0.28 750g salt
£0.16 175g granulated sugar
£1.28 1 litre malt vinegar
£0.09 3 tsp mustard seeds
£0.04 1 tsp peppercorns
£0.03 1 tsp garam marsala
£0.17 1 cinnamon stick
£4.05 Total
£2.89 per kg of onions (about half the cost of traditional pickled onions (not budget ones) from tesco)

The onions are top and tailed and then soaked in boiling water for 20 seconds, which helps loosen the skin.

After peeling and being laid out in a shallow dish, salt is poured over and the dish covered up for the night.

Meanwhile the spiced vinegar is prepared by mixing with the spices and bringing to boiling point, you can use a muslin bag to hold the spices, although I find straining afterward works just as well. This is then left to cool overnight.

After 12 hours the salt has removed about 100ml of water from the onions, which are rinsed and packed into steralised jars.

The cool vinegar is poured over (if a soft onion is preferred it can be reheated before pouring) and a few bay leaves tucked in. It's important to cover the top onions with at least a 1 cm of vinegar as some may evaporate during storage.

The pickles should be kept in a cool dark place for a few months to allow the flavours to mature.

Recipe Timings

20 mins peeling and salting
10 mins preparing vinegar
overnight salting and cooling
15 mins potting

Taste Test

These have turned out well, in fact I prefer them to the sweet pickled onions and hot and spicy picked onions I also made this year.
I guess, in this case, you just can't beat the classic recipe.