Another Onion Tip

A couple of weeks ago when I made my first batch of dill pickles, I found myself with just a little bit of extra brine. This pretty much always happens when I make pickles. I either have not quite enough and have to make more to top off the jar, or I have only a cup or so of extra brine.

I never throw the extra brine away. Usually I just put it in a jar and save it for the next time I have more cucumbers to pickle.

But this time, I happened to have half an onion from something else on my cutting board. So instead of just cooking the onion like I typically would, I decided to try putting thinly sliced onion in the brine, along with just a bit of sugar.

And now I will never be without pickled onions.

They are so good. They're kind of like green onions, in that they still have an onion flavor, but the pickling tames the bite of raw onion.

I love them in my salads. They are also great on sandwiches, and I've used them to top chili, too. It's amazing how many things I find for them to go on and in when they're just waiting in the refrigerator.

A tomato and cucumber salad can always use onion.

All I did to make them was cut my half an onion in half (to make shorter pieces), and then slice those quarters as thinly as possible. That filled a pint jar. I poured the hot brine over the onion, added maybe a quarter teaspoon of sugar, shook it all up, and put it in the refrigerator. They were ready to use in just a couple of days.

When I finish up the big jar of refrigerator pickles I have right now, I think I'm going to strain the brine (to remove any bits of dill and cucumber seeds) and heat it to boiling again so I can make a really big jar of pickled onions. This should work because I make my brine really strong to start with, so it doesn't get diluted too much from the cucumbers. 

You're never too old to learn new things in the kitchen, I guess. Or anywhere.