Four Jars of Pickled Onions
current situation: pickle heaven
Four jars on a windowsill, all onions, all different. One afternoon, four results, and three of them are ready by dinner.
The useful distinction nobody explains: a quick pickle is hot brine poured over raw vegetables and kept in the fridge — ready in an hour, keeps a month. A brined pickle is salt water and time, it goes cloudy because it is fermenting, and it keeps for months. The cloudy jar in the picture is not a failure, it is a different thing entirely.
Red onion goes magenta in about twenty minutes and it is the single best return on effort in this entire file.
- Makes
- 4 quart jars
- Hands-on
- 40 minutes
- Ready
- 1 hour to 2 weeks
- Keeps
- 1–3 months, cold
What you need
Jar 1 — magenta red onion (1 hour)
- 3 red onions, sliced thin
- 1 cup cider vinegar
- 1 cup water
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1 tsp peppercorns, 2 bay leaves
Jar 2 — whole white onions, fermented (2 weeks)
- 1 lb small white onions, peeled, left whole
- 4 cups water
- 3 tbsp sea salt — no iodine
- 2 cloves garlic, 1 tsp peppercorns
Jar 3 — crimson beet brine (1 day)
- 2 beetroot, cooked and sliced
- 2 onions, sliced
- 1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 tbsp salt
Jar 4 — onion and chilli in amber (1 hour)
- 3 onions, sliced
- 6 red and green chillies, sliced
- 1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1 tbsp salt, 1 tsp mustard seed, 1 tsp turmeric
How it goes
1 — Sterilise the jars and lids
Washed hot, then ten minutes in a 250°F oven, or straight out of a dishwasher cycle. Hot brine into a cold jar can crack it, so keep them warm.
2 — Slice the onions thin and even
A mandoline if you have one. Even slices pickle at the same rate; a jar with thick and thin together is a jar with raw pieces in it.
3 — Jars 1, 3 and 4: hot brine, straight over
Vinegar, water, sugar or honey and salt brought to a boil until dissolved, then poured over the packed raw vegetables right away. The heat softens them just enough and the colour starts moving within minutes.
4 — Jar 2 is salt water and patience, no vinegar
Whole peeled onions in a 5% brine — three tablespoons of salt to four cups of water — weighted under the surface. On the counter, loosely covered, for two weeks.
pro tip — It will go cloudy and smell sour in a few days. That is lactic fermentation and it is correct. Mould on the surface is not — anything fuzzy means it was not kept under the brine.
5 — Everything stays submerged
A small glass weight, or a folded cabbage leaf, or just packing it tighter. Anything above the liquid goes brown, and in the fermented jar it goes worse than brown.
6 — An hour for red onion, a day for the beet jar
The magenta jar is ready and spectacular within an hour. The beet one needs overnight for the colour to go all the way through.
7 — Three in the fridge, one on the sill
The vinegar jars keep a month or more cold. The fermented one goes to the fridge once it tastes right, and slows to a stop there.
Pickle heaven. The red onion jar will be empty first, every time. LFG.