Freezing onions.
After harvesting onions out of the garden there are 4 options:
- Eat them
- Can them (think salsa, chutney, or with tomatoes…)
- Cure & store them or
- Freeze them
I have several hanging in my basement that I cured & braided. To learn how to cure onions go here.
They will keep down there until about January. It’s just after Christmas every year that I notice the onions beginning to go soft. Freezing is a great way to prevent this from happening. Frozen onions will keep longer than the ones just hanging in my basement. Frozen onions are also wonderfully handy since they are already diced up and ready to be tossed into a pot.
Today I’m going to freeze some onions.
First they must be chopped to smithereens. My children LOVE onions. But, don’t tell them that. I have to dice my onions until they hardly exist because if one of my youngest 2 think they SEE an onion they immediately declare that dinner is a failure & ask how much of the they “HAVE” to eat.
When my oldest son was 4 years old he thought he wanted be a picky eater when he grew up. Unfortunately, he was born into the wrong family if he wanted to be picky. Around here dinner is whatever Mom makes. In his efforts to have something else presented before him for his evening meal, he looked at his plate and stated, “That’s not my dinner.”
It was.
Now, just throw some onions in an iron skillet with a little butter and watch them come running from all directions to see what in the world is happening in the kitchen and if they can eat it now.
Before we begin the onion chopping I must get my headgear on.
To learn more about swim goggles in the kitchen, go here.
Sometimes I chop with a knife.
Sometimes I use this. It was a gift from my friend. Thank you, friend. My life is better now. All you do is put the peeled onion inside the bottom chamber of this guy and pound on the top like a maniac.
You will have perfect diced-to-smithereens-onions in approximately 4 seconds.
After they have been transformed into onion-puree by your Pampered Chef Chopper, spread them out on a cookie sheet.
And, slide that into a freezer. We are going to “flash-freeze” these babies. It only takes a few minutes.
After 30 minutes, the onions are pretty much frozen. Next, place the onion-sicles into a freezer bag.
Because these onions were flash-frozen, they will be stored nice and loose in the bag. I can sprinkle out as few or as many as I want for a meal. If I had chopped up my onions & immediately placed them in the freezer bag (without flash-freezing), I would have a giant onion cube. It would be a solid mass more or less.
Flash freezing is nice if you don’t want to cook with a 2 pound block of onion ice.
Last, stick your bag of onions in the freezer & you have onions ready to go any time.
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-Candi
