Making onions

There's a reason all the food

Garnish their dishes with pink pickled onions: they really pop in a thumbnail.

See? But we also use them because

They're a snap to make, they add welcome crunch and brightness and pungency to all kinds of savory dishes.

And yeah, they're real pretty. There are however, at least three basic ways of making them, and today we're going to test eight different recipes. I will summarize my findings for you now, though. All the basic recipes work and the results are surprisingly similar, so just do whichever one is easiest for you. But if you need pickles today, use one of the methods involving heat. If you can wait until tomorrow — or the next day, even better — my favorite method remains using no heat at all. Just soak the onions in some vinegar and or lime juice, maybe some sugar, a little salt, throw it in the fridge.

Two days later, you got the best pink pickled onions ever — to my taste, at least. But of course, the first thing you need to do is cut the onion, and the way you cut it does matter, to a point. Get a red onion — other kinds will work, they just won't be pink. And you imagine the onion is a globe, with the blossom and root ends representing the north and south poles. First, bisect the onion longitudinally, pole to pole, then peel. I agree with the majority opinion that it is best to use further longitudinal cuts to slice it into thin wedges — a Frenched onion. Orbit around, leave all the pieces attached at the base to hold them together, and when you're done, you just snip off the root and they fall apart. Perfect.

Could you make latitudinal cuts instead? Sure, and that's easier if you're not confident with your knife, but there are two arguments against doing it this way. People say slicing across the onion like this damages more cells, which results in more pungent flavor. As you may know, the really pungent flavor compounds in onions and garlic don't actually exist when the onion is in its intact form. You have to cut it, rupture the cells, and then compounds that are normally separated combine, chemical reactions ensue, and you get that really kind of hot, pungent flavor. It's a defense mechanism for the plant. People say cutting the onion crosswise results in more cellular damage, maybe because we're cutting perpendicular to the plant's vascular system. You can see the cross section of the xylem and the phloem there. That's what those little circles are.

In 2019, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt did a little experiment where he sliced onions crosswise, then he sliced them lengthwise. Then he put the separate samples into sealed containers and left them for 10 minutes. Then he popped open the containers and he smelled. The onion he sliced crosswise — it gave off a much stronger whiff, indicating more cellular damage, more pungent flavor. People now often advise slicing onions lengthwise and they cite Kenji's experiment as their justification. But it's important to remember there that Kenji was experimenting with onions for a very specific purpose: burgers — fresh cut, raw onions to put on a burger and to eat raw. When you cook your onions, or soak them in acid for a few days, you're going to do at least as much cellular damage as you could possibly do with a knife, to say nothing of the cellular damage that you're going to do when you actually chew your food.

So I just don't think it's the same thing. Nonetheless, I still agree that it's best to slice them pole to pole because the resulting pieces look a lot prettier, especially after they've pickled. Latitudinal slices like these tend to be a lot more stringy and floppy, but that doesn't really matter that much.

Do whatever you want.

To pickle these I'll mostly be using good old white distilled vinegar, often used as a cleaning product rather than a food. You need a lot of vinegar to make these pickles. White distilled is by far the cheapest kind, and I really don't notice much of a difference in the final product compared to more expensive vinegars, especially once you put the pickles on actual food. Let's take a second to clarify that we are making refrigerator pickles today.

These are not old school pickles — the kind that you can put in a jar and then put in the basement and keep there for two years at room temperature and it'll be fine. These are not that. In order to make that kind of pickle, you have to sterilize all of your instruments. You have to really closely monitor your pH and your salinity and make sure that it's in a correct range. You have to force all of the air out of the jar. It is a whole thing. We are not doing that. With refrigerator pickles, you just soak stuff in acid and put it in the fridge to slow any microbial growth.

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OK, now time to actually pickle the onions. For sample number one, I'm just going to cover the onions in straight vinegar. A cup and a half, 350mL for one small onions' worth of slices. For flavor I usually do a pinch of salt — I'm measuring a quarter teaspoon for consistency today. And then I usually do a little handful of sugar, a teaspoon today for consistency.

Though, you could use a lot more

Sugar if you really like sweet pickles.

Give that a little stir.

Everything will dissolve in time and that's it.

No cooking, no nothing. Throw it in the fridge. For sample number two, I'll do what I normally do, which is submerge the onions about halfway up in vinegar. Same amount of salt and sugar. In time, the acid breaks down the onions and they release tons of their internal water. They will end up submerged, or nearly submerged. You'll see. Now let's try the hot methods.

For sample number three, I'm going to bring my 350mL of vinegar to a boil. Again, a quarter teaspoon of salt, full teaspoon of sugar. Then you just pour the boiling solution over the onions. Lots of recipes will tell you to do just that. Sample number four will be the same procedure, except I'm using half vinegar, half water. Lots of recipes tell you to do this. The solution should still be plenty acidic enough, but it won't be quite as harsh. On top.

Would it make a difference if we boiled the onions with the vinegar? Let's find out with sample number five. Everything in the pot, bring it to a boil, dump it out into the glass. The third basic procedure for making these pickles is a blanching procedure. You pour plain boiling water over the onions, count to five or 10 or something, and then strain — dump the water out. Onions in the glass. Dump in room temperature vinegar, salt and sugar. That's sample number six. Sample number seven will be the Mexican-inspired recipe made famous, in the U.S.

at least, by chef Rick Bayless. He blanches the onions for 10 seconds in boiling water, pours the water off, and instead of using vinegar, he uses fresh squeezed lime juice. Lime juice generally has a pH around 2.5, just like white vinegar, but it is a natural product, and therefore it varies somewhat. You definitely won't want to boil the lime juice — you'd lose all of that fresh flavor. Some salt and sugar. For my last sample, I'm going to test the influence of spices. I got some black peppercorns, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, dried chili, juniper, cloves — all common pickling spices. I'm toasting them dry, which usually intensifies their flavor a bit.

I'll let those steep in the vinegar as it comes to a boil.

Pour that over.

Salt and sugar. That is sample number eight. I'll wait until all of the hot samples have steamed off before covering. To test these, I think we need to taste them at a series of time intervals. So first, let's taste them after they've just been soaking for a couple hours. So, it's the same day — it's just two or three hours later.

The samples we didn't cook at all look nice and taste nice, but they're more like marinated onions than pickles. They're still really crunchy and they're not yet uniformly pink. The ones where we boiled the vinegar — they immediately seem like pickles. Chill them down and they're pickles. But to me, these taste less fresh. They taste cooked, unsurprisingly. Here's the ones we blanched — pour over boiling water, wait 10 seconds then strain. Texturally that is a nice compromise between the raw pickles and the cooked ones.

They still have some nice crunch. The pink color isn't quite uniform yet after just two hours. But I mean, those are pickles. So my first conclusion is if you need pickles today and you have time to bring a pot to a boil, use one of the hot solution methods. I like the blanching one, mostly because that involves bringing water to a boil instead of vinegar, and boiling vinegar really stinks up the kitchen. But let's throw these in the fridge, go to bed and taste them tomorrow. Good night. Good morning.

Pickles are now a day old. The totally raw onions look and feel more like pickles, but they're still pretty crisp and fresh, which I like. The ones that we poured over hot vinegar — these taste basically the same as they did yesterday, which is to say they taste nice, but noticeably softer than the raw onions. The ones we blanched for 10 seconds in the boiling water are much nicer in my opinion — crispier and the pink color is fully uniform after a day. Why does that happen? Well, red onions contain a class of compounds called anthocyanins. We did a whole video about anthocyanins, it's in the description. Pretty much whenever an edible plant is blue or purple or pink, the reason is anthocyanins. Red onions, of course, are not actually red — they're purple and, the anthocyanins are concentrated in the outer layer of each leaf.

The acid and also the heat breaks down the onion cells, spilling their contents into the solution and everything equilibrates across the entire mass. The onion piece acquires a uniform color, and it's pink rather than red because of the low pH. Acids turn anthocyanins from blue to purple to pink.

If you want to have some real

Fun, cook some red onions in some water, and instead of lowering the ph, raise it.

Put in a base, baking soda.

It immediately pushes the anthocyanin past blue and into the green part of the spectrum. Delicious. Anyway, let's taste the pickles after two days in the fridge and I will give you my final opinions.

Day three, everybody out of the fridge. Sample number one is raw onions fully submerged in vinegar. The raw ones just get better and better every day, yet still retain their fresh crispiness. Really nice. Even better, in my opinion, is sample number two, which we just covered in vinegar halfway up. Water leaks out of the onions, everything ends up covered. The taste is less harsh because there's proportionally less vinegar, and we're not diluting the flavor with added water. Also, we've wasted less vinegar.

Those are great if you can wait a couple of days for them. But, question: How safe are these, given that we did not pasteurize them with heat? Are there any microorganisms in here that could breed slowly but surely in the refrigerator as these sit for weeks on end in there? Well, let's test its pH. 3.2 — that's real acidic. Remember seven is neutral. At that pH, most common food pathogens should either die or not be able to reproduce. That said, I probably wouldn't keep any refrigerator pickles for longer than, I don't know, a couple of weeks. There's just no reason to risk it. It's not like the olden days where you had to pickle everything that you grew right before the winter.

These you can make in small batches, it's fine. Sample number three we covered in boiling vinegar. It's amazing how little these change with time. Still nice, but less crisp. The pH here by the way is 2.9, which is more acidic simply because we fully submerged these in vinegar. More vinegar, more acid. Sample number four was the same procedure, but we used half vinegar, half water. The pH here is 3.3 and you definitely taste the difference.

Less acidic, less harsh. Nicer on their own, but we don't eat these pickles on their own. We usually eat them on food, and when I put the full-vinegar pickles on a nacho, I personally prefer those compared to the half-vinegar pickles on a nacho. The half-vinegar ones aren't strong enough for me once diluted with a bunch of food. But your experience may vary. Sample number five is the only one I don't like. These are the onions we boiled with the vinegar.

Totally edible, but too slimy for my

Taste.

They just broke down too much in the heat. Would not make again. Sample number six is the blanched onions — 10 seconds in boiling water and then drained. Again, a nice compromise between the cooked and raw onions. Again, very little change from day to day. I think another justification for that blanch and drain procedure is that it theoretically washes away some of the pungent compounds in onions that people might find overpowering. For what it's worth, I notice no difference in the onion pungency across any of these samples. I think it all just evens out with the pickling.

Here's the Rick Bayless onions, blanched then pickled in lime juice. Way too strong for me. All I taste is lime, and I love lime, but I want to taste onions too. The pH is, whoa, 2.3. I may have gotten a particularly acidic bunch of limes. My conclusion there is that if I'm going to use lime juice, I will use it in addition to vinegar, not in place of vinegar. Just a little splash of lime for some extra flavor and freshness. Finally, sample number eight is the one with the spices, and the spice flavors just keep getting stronger day after day.

I'm getting noticeable heat from the chili now, and the clove especially is totally overpowering. If you're going to play with spices in pickling solutions, be conservative. You only need a little. But again, I want to emphasize that all of these tasted way more similar than I would've expected. So just do the one that's easiest for you. The one thing you don't want to do is use a base instead of an acid. Here's what's left of the baking soda onions after three days. Great way to dispose of your enemies.

Once you've disposed of your pickles, don't throw away the juice. Use it to make sweet and sour sauces, or just cut up another vegetable like these cucumbers and throw those in the solution. The next day they'll look like this, and they'll be even better tomorrow. Man, I love pickles...