1 small case Mason or Kilner jars for canning
2 dozen small to medium-small yellow onions
1 cup kosher or sea salt (not table salt)
1 gallon water
4-6 whole garlic pods, peeled
2 peeled carrots, cut into chunks
1/2 dozen whole hot pepper pods (birds-eye or cayenne)
2 bay leaves
3-4 tablespoons pickling spice for a quart jar/6-8 tablespoons for a half-gallon jar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar for a quart jar/4 tablespoons for a half gallon jar.
1 quart apple cider or malt vinegar
Pitcher of water
First, wash, rinse, and sterilize the canning jars. Best way to do this is to put them into your dishwasher and allow them to run through the drying cycle. When they’re ready, set them on the countertop on a clean dish towel. (Be sure you to the lids and seals as well). Most popular jars for pickling onions and eggs are quart and half-gallon sizes.
Next, peel your onions, taking care to remove only the outer skin to avoid nicking them with knife scars. As you peel them, drop them into a stainless steel or plastic bowl full of cold water. If you were lucky enough to find really small yellow onions, you can leave them whole. If they’re mostly medium, you can half or quarter them to pack them into the jars tightly.
At this point, you need to make your brine solution—a cup of salt to a gallon of water (make sure all the salt dissolves in the water). And remember. . .nothing reactive (no aluminum, no cast iron, etc.). Best containers for brining are stainless steel, glass, plastic, crockery, or Corning Ware. If you’re going to “put up” a number of jars, I recommend brining the onions in a 4 to 6 quart stainless steel pot with a lid. If you’re going to do only one or two jars, for example, then simply pack the onions in the jars and brine them in the jars. Important—they need to stay in the brine solution for 24 hours.
When you’re ready to pickle, remove the onions from the brine, rinse them thoroughly (several times) under cool running water, and pat them dry with a clean kitchen towel. Then begin packing them into your pickling jars. . .and pack them in tightly all the way to the top. Don’t worry about head room. This is also the time when you pack in your carrot chunks, your garlic pods, your whole peppers, and your bay leaves. All these “extra” additions are done to your taste (more carrots, less garlic, only one pepper, etc.).
All that’s left to do now is “dress the onions.” You do this by adding the pickling spice and the sugar to the jar, then filling it 2/3rds full of vinegar with just enough water to fill the jar the rest of the way to the top. Now seal the jar tightly, give it a couple of good shakes to mix everything together, and stash it away in a cool dark spot for a minimum of 5 days but ideally for 6 weeks or longer.
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Chef’s Notes:
If you can’t find the whole pepper pods where you shop, you can substitute crushed red pepper flakes in their place.
Kilner jars are those with the red rubber ring seal and the metal snap-closure gadget on the top.
Some recipes tell you to boil the onions before putting them into the jars. That’s not New Orleans style. New Orleans pickled onions are crispy because they are not cooked. The recipes that call for boiling the onions are English in origin. That technique produces soft onions
***********
Chef’s Notes:
If you can’t find the whole pepper pods where you shop, you can substitute crushed red pepper flakes in their place.
Kilner jars are those with the red rubber ring seal and the metal snap-closure gadget on the top.
Some recipes tell you to boil the onions before putting them into the jars. That’s not New Orleans style. New Orleans pickled onions are crispy because they are not cooked. The recipes that call for boiling the onions are English in origin. That technique produces soft onions
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