A good garden will yield you a bounty of onions, just about ready for their final harvest about this time of year. Once you’ve grown them you need to learn how to store them. It’s really not that difficult and stored properly they will last for about six months .
When are they ready to harvest? My parents could look at the onion tops and tell exactly when they were ready to harvest. The “tell” is that the onion tops will shrink down and look like the plants are dying. If you see flowers starting to grow on the stalks you’ve left them in the dirt too long, dig them up right away. If you’re a more scientific type, most of the onion varieties that grow in our climate are ready to harvest at twelve weeks.
You have to dig the onions and leave them out in the sunlight for a couple of days. I’m not sure why we do this, but my parents believed that this helps to keep them preserved. It works well for red and gold onions, but don’t try it on white onions, I learned the hard way that they discolor in the sun and though they’re still edible, they look like they’re diseased and nobody in my family, including me, would eat them.
The best way to store your onions is to store them whole. They’re really easy to store, it’s a simple process. and takes only about a week.
First you should brush the dirt off as much as you can, don’t wash them with water or any kind of soap. Then you should place the onions on an piece of screen or hardware cloth (an old picture frame with screen stapled to it makes a great drying rack and keeps the onions coralled so you don’t have to pick them up individually when you need to move them) for about five days inside your garden shed. As the onions dry, the soil that you couldn’t brush off will dry up and fall through the screen. Clean onions will keep much longer than dirty ones. After about a week, brush the remaining dust off and take them into your cellar or any other cool, dark place. In case you have a field mouse or two in your cellar you should place them somewhere the mice can’t get them. Most kitchen gadget departments sell these hanging mesh metal baskets, usually sets of three arranged small, medium, and large top-to-bottom that work very well for keeping your onions dry and away from the critters. My Mom used to store them in old panty hose. She would place an onion in the toe, tie a knot, place another onion in the stocking, tie a knot and repeat the process until she reached the top. It worked great and made it very easy to go down to the cellar and get a few onions, you just cut the hose with scissors at the point above the number you want. I will admit that our cellar did look a little strange with a number of these contraptions hanging over in the corner but nobody seemed to mind when they were turned into yummy pasta sauce or skillet potatoes and onions on Sunday mornings.
Both of these storage solutions have one thing in common, they let air get to the onions, the more air circulation the better. You don’t ever want to store them in plastic or metal containers because these restrict air circulation and encourage mold. If you get mold on your stored onions, throw them out into the mulch pile, they’re no good for eating.
The other option to store your raw onions is to freeze them. This is a good way to store prepared onions and cut down on your cooking time when you’re ready to use them. Cut a few (about 2 pounds makes a decent amount) into slices or dice them into chunks and put them in heavy duty freezer bags with really secure fastening systems. Frozen onions never look or taste like fresh (they tend to get soggy in the freezer) but if you are going to use them in soups, stews, or sauces anyway, freezing is a great way to store your onions.
You can also store cooked onions in the freezer. Cook your onions as you usually would and then let them come to room temperature. Then place small amounts in individual freezer bags, I find that 1/2 cup is just about the right amount per bag. When you take them out of the freezer to use them, do not thaw them, they will turn into a soggy mush. Instead throw them frozen into a pre-heated saute pan with a little olive oil or butter and heat them up quickly. You’ll be amazed how much they taste like fresh onions.
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