Made to match

A few weeks ago, I bought a pair of glass jars to pickle some gherkins in. As it happened, I only needed one of them, so this week I thought it would be fun to fill up the remaining jar with pickled onions (p231).


I'd got some pickling onions, but before I could do anything with them, they had to be peeled. Since I had a whole bagful to get through, I was fairly watery-eyed by the time I had them all done. Then they went into a bowl with some salt and enough water to cover.

24 hours later, it was time to finish the job. I rinsed off the salt and packed the onions into the sterilised jar, with a couple of dried chillis and peppercorns. Unfortunately, I'd made a pretty poor estimate of how many I'd need, and the jar wasn't completely full.


Deciding it didn't matter, I poured in enough white vinegar to cover the onions. I could also have used malt vinegar, but since I've been using that a lot lately - and particularly since I'd used it for the gherkins - I decided white vinegar would make a nice change.

And that's all there is to it. Homemade pickled onions: very very easy. Again, I've got to keep them for at least a month before I try them, so I can't tell you how they taste, but at least now, instead of an empty jar in the cupboard, I've got a matching jar of onions next to my gherkins!