Storing Onions

So you may remember my post on Harvesting Onions with all those beautiful onions hanging on a ladder in my garage to cure.

Well those onions have now dried and look like this. 

 

The next step is to cut them down and put them into storage waiting to be used up.  With proper storage these onions will last many, many months.

The first thing I did was cut the bunches down by cutting the twine off the ladder.  Next I cut each onion off of the bunch with scissors cutting the next about an inch or two above the onion bulb.  A few of the larger onions still had wet necks, meaning the stem growing out of the top of the onion was still wet of juicy when I cut it.  These onions need to dry more or they will not store properly.  I moved these into my kitchen to be used first, just in case.

Ready to move from the garage into long term storage

I have a pantry downstairs which is underground.  It stays cool and dry all year long.  That is the perfect place for my onions.  There are a number of ways to store onions.  Some people use bins with lots of small holes to allow for air circulation.  Some people encase the onions in panty hose, knotting between the onions then cutting off onions as needed.

I use this hanging mesh toy storage thingee I purchased from IKEA years ago. 

I put the onions in a single layer in each level of the mess hanging thingee (what is this thing called anyway).  The mesh allows for sufficient air circulation around the onions. 

I check the onions periodically to look for any that are getting soft, smell bad, or have sprouted. Remove any of those types of onions immediately to keep the rest of the onions from going bad.

Keep in mind that home grown onions will not store as long as grocery store onions because grocery store onions are sprayed with a sprout inhibitor right before they are cured.  Homegrown onions often try to sprout before the next year's onion crop is ready.  You can eat sprouted onions.  Just don't leave sprouted onions to set with the rest of the storage onions too long.

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Harvesting Onions

This weekend it was time to harvest our onions.  Most years we grow two or three varieties of onion from seed with the goal of planting enough onions to last until the next year's harvest.  This year with the weird weather not allowing us to get seed into the garden early enough, and with our thoughts on moving (how much stored produce do we really want to move across country) we planted a small number of onions from sets.  Well a small number for us anyway.

An onion set is a small onion bulb.  Some grower somewhere planted onion seeds and grew them for a while until each seed grew into an onion bulb about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch in diameter.  The grower harvested all these little bulbs, cured them, bagged them up, then sold them to a middlemen who sold them to a retailer who sold them to me. 

We took the bag of onion sets home, prepared a garden bed for them and planted them in the soil.  Two months (give or take) later the onions were ready to harvest.  Onions tell you when they are ready to harvest by falling over.  Garlic does the same thing.  Rather handy actually.  If you leave the onions in the ground after they fall over, it won't be long before all those green onion tops dry out and eventually blow away making it difficult to find the onions.  So I try to harvest before the tops dry out.

Onions laying down and ready to harvest

Harvesting onions is simple in a properly prepared bed.  Grab the neck of the onion as close to the top of the bulb as you can and gently pull.  Usually the onions pull out easily.  In the picture below you can see how few roots the onion bulb has.  While it was growing it had a much larger mass of roots. 

Pull gently

I put all the onions into trugs for easy hauling around the yard.

Onions harvested, now the real work begins

Now that the onions are all harvested, we have to do something with them.  If I only grew a few, I would just rinse them off and keep them in the kitchen to be used up.  But I have more than a few days worth of onions so I need a way to store them for a longer time.  In order to store onions, they need to be properly cured.  Curing is a process where the outer layer of the onion bulb and the neck of the onion (the place where the green top grows out of the bulb) is dried so that the onion inside stays usable for months and months.

I like to rinse the dirt off of the onions before I cure them.  First I laid the onions out on the driveway in a single layer.

Laid out and ready for a rinse

Next I rinsed the dirt off the onions with the hose.  My helper had great fun with this task.

My helper

As you can see from the before and after rinsing pictures below, this is not going to make the onions dirt free.  But it will make them a lot cleaner.

Before

After - not perfect but much cleaner

Once the onions are all rinsed, I leave them on the driveway to dry out for a couple of hours. 

Rinsed off and left to dry

After the onions dried out on the driveway for a couple of hours it was time to tie them up in bunches.  Depending upon the size of the onions, I group them into bunches of 6 to 10 onions then tie up each bunch with twine.  I use 18 to 24 inches of twine for each bunch.  After each bunch is tied up, I cut off the green tops 8 to 10 inches or so above the twine. 

Tied and ready to cure

In the picture above you can see all the onions tied up in neat bunches ready to cure. 

The pile of onions above the bunches are onions that either did not have a green top to tie up (because I pulled the top off while trying to get the onion out of the ground) or were not really fit to be cured.  A few of the onions had really thick or big necks.  An onion with a large neck will not cure well.  Usually those onions rot after a month or so of harvest because the neck never dries out "sealing" the onion inside.  So this pile of onions I just move into the kitchen to be used up first.

The last step in curing the onions is to store them somewhere where they will get lots of air circulation and be able to dry out the outer layers and neck properly.  For us, this is our garage.  It is warm all summer and has ceiling fans running constantly.  I hang the onion bunches on a ladder in the garage and leave them there for 2 to 3 weeks until they are ready for storage in a cool pantry in our basement.  Someday I hope for a root cellar.  For more information about storing onions, see my Storing Onions post here.

Curing

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Scape and Basil Pesto

Now that our Garage Sale is over, I can get back to blogging.  In the middle of the garage sale madness, our garlic put on their scapes.  A scape is a garlic flower bud.  If left on the plant the scape will blossom into a white allium type flower just like the Chive Blossoms. 

Garlic Scape

The scape is the curlicue part of the garlic plant pictured above.  Garlic cloves are a type of bulb, just like a tulip, well technically just like an onion but people are more familiar with tulips.  Scapes grow on hard necked varieties of garlic.  Hard neck garlic is generally grown in the north while most soft necked garlics are grown in warmer climates.

Garlic growers usually remove the garlic flower bud, the scape, before it opens.  This forces plant growth back into bulb production rather than into flower production.  And since we grow garlic for the blub, not the flower, I snap the scapes off my garlic too by just snapping the scape off the plant, usually just below the curlicue. 

Harvested Garlic Scapes

Usually we grow enough garlic to last until the next year's garlic crop.  However, a significant amount of our garlic did not survive our insane spring weather this year.  The weather kept vacillating between fifty degrees and twenty-five degrees.  Just as soon as the garlic, and most of the other bulbs in the garden including the tulips and hyacinths, started to grow there would be a hard freeze followed by growing weather and another hard freeze.   The picture above is the entire harvest of scapes.  Usually we have at least twenty times that amount.  If you don't grow garlic (which you should do because it is so easy) you can buy scapes at the farmer's market. 

But whether we have a little or a lot of scapes, we need to do something with them.  My favorite thing to do is to turn them into pesto.  If I had more scapes this year I would also have pickled some and used them fresh in cooking.

A traditional pesto recipe is:

2 cups basil leaves
2 garlic cloves
1/3 cup pine nuts
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup parmesan cheese

For a garlic scape pesto there are a variety of recipes.  Some using basil and some not.  The most basic garlic scape pesto recipe uses scapes in place of garlic cloves, from 1/2 cup to 1 cup of chopped scapes in place of the garlic cloves.  Scapes taste like garlic; surprise, surprise I know. 

But since I rarely follow a traditional recipes (and I never ever have pine nuts in my pantry), my scape and basil pesto recipe is:

1 - 2 cups chopped garlic scapes (20 - 30 scapes)
2 cups basil leaves (about two large fistfuls of fresh leaves)
1/2 - 1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt

This recipe has a lot of bite to it.  I think the vinegar balances nicely with the spiciness.

To start, put whole (washed and dried) scapes into a food processer to chop coarsely. 

Chopped Scapes

Then add the basil on top and pulse several times.

Adding the basil to the chopped scapes

You may need to add the basil in small amounts.  This is especially true with my rather small food processer.  After a few additions of the basil, the green mixture no longer pulses well.  This is when I start adding the olive oil.  Drizzle some of the olive oil in along with each addition of basil and pulse a few times.  Once all the olive oil and basil is added, run the food processer until the mixture has the consistency of a thin paste.  You don't want to be able to see chunks of scape or basil.

Next I add in all the grated cheese, balsamic vinegar, and salt. 

Note, depending upon your taste you may want to add the vinegar in a little at a time to suit your own taste or skip it all together for a more traditional pesto.  I often add more than the 1/4 cup.

Another note, I grate my own cheese with a micro planer for pesto.  It is so much better tasting than the pre-grated stuff in the green can if you know what I mean.  And since pesto is not cooked, the flavor of each ingredient is very important.

Pulse the pesto until thoroughly mix.  Then taste test.  If the pesto is too spicy or sour for your liking, add more cheese.  Remember the Pecorino Romano is very salty.



Ready to Use

Most often I put pesto on cooked pasta.  But it also is great as a spread for sandwiches (try pesto with salami, gorgonzola, lettuce, and capers in a whole wheat wrap... trust me, try it).  It also is great on chicken!

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Chive Vinegar

Usually there are so many things to tend to in the garden this time of year. But it has been so cool and rainy everything is sluggish. And it snowed through the first week of May which significantly delayed planting our warm weather crops.  But everything is in the garden now.

The plants all look healthy if not a little small for the time of year.  However a few stalwarts refuse to be daunted by the weather.  Among them the chives.

My chives started with one little plant in a two inch pot I brought home as an impulse purchase. Now, some fourteen clumps later lining my lower garden bed, and countless plants given away, I can honestly declare my chives are thriving.

Chive Buds Ready To Pop

I love so many things about chives; their happy waving green stalks, the strong aroma when trimmed for cooking, the light onion taste they bring to raw vegetable dishes, and probably my favorite their beautiful flower.  Being part of the allium family, chives bear the telltale "globe of many flowers" bloom ranging from pink to purple to blue. 

Love This Color

I must admit that I love all alliums. We have a bed of ornamental alliums that are grown for their amazing blooms. We always grow three or four types of garlic, enough for a whole year of cooking plus some for next falls' seed garlic. And then there are the onions that I can't seem to do without.
 
One of my favorite projects is making chive vinegar.  For this project you will need:

A dry sterilized jar with lid (one quart mason jars work well)
3 - 3 1/2 cups white wine or rice vinegar
1 cup or more chive blossoms

Pick the chive blossoms in the morning after the dew has dried but before the heat of the day has caused their essential oils to evaporate. 

Gently swish the blossoms in cold water until free of debris. 

Getting a Cool Rinse 

Allow blossoms to dry; you can let them air dry or use a salad spinner.

Drying on a Towel

Pack the blossoms into the sterilized jar then fill the jar with your choice of vinegar. 

Fill the Jar

I prefer to use a good  white wine vinegar or a rice wine vinegar.  Remember the better the vinegar the better the end product.  Don't use apple cider vinegar because the darker color of the vinegar will mask the beautiful pink the chive blossoms produce. Also apple cider vinegar has its own very strong flavor that overpowers the more delicate chive flavor.

Close the jar and let set for 4 - 6 weeks in a dark place.  Shake the vinegar in the jar every couple of days during this time.  Once the vinegar is to your liking you can choose to leave the blossoms in or strain them out.  The best choice is to strain out the old blossoms then add a few new blossoms to the finished product.  However, given the time frame in which chives bloom,  fresh blossoms may not be available.

After 6 days.  Don't you love the color!

Note, if you have a metal lid for your jar, the vinegar may react with the lid making a mess and generally unusable product (don't ask me how I know).  Put a layer of plastic wrap between the jar opening and the lid to prevent the vinegar and metal lid from reacting.  Also label and date your jar.  It is very easy to forget what you made and when you made it after several weeks (again, don't ask me how I know). 

There are many other herbal vinegar worth having as well.  These all make great salad dressings, vegetable and/or meat marinades, additions to soups (especially when a soup just needs something), or a great sprinkle over bruschetta.

Try basil and garlic in white wine vinegar, or dill, chive and peppercorn in red wine vinegar.  The basic recipe is the same, just the herbs have been changed to protect the innocent, I mean to add some variety to your pantry. 

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