We have a garden and we always plant an overabundance so we can preserve some of the vegetables and fruits for use through out the year. One of the vegetables we plant so much of is onions. Onions are a food staple in our home. They can be used in casseroles, soups, omelets, salsas and used on top of burgers or hot dogs or go into a chicken, tuna, or egg salad. Onions are just so versatile!
My favorite way of preserving onions is by dehydrating them. When you can or freeze an onion, the texture and taste of onions are changed. BUT when you dehydrate an onion and then rehydrate it, it is just like using a fresh onion. The texture and taste is the same...it is unaltered. I also prefer dehydrating over canning because it takes less effort to preserve them and takes up less space to store them.
To begin with, just do a quick rinse of the onion and then peel it. The reason you rinse the onion before you peel it is to remove anything on the skin so it will not get on the inner onion. Now that it is peeled, you can cut up the onion. I dehydrate my onions by cutting them in two different ways. I cut them up and diced them into large chunks or I cut the onion into "rings".
Once they are sliced, just place them on your dehydrator trays for about 10 hours. I just turn on my dehydrator right before I go to bed and let them go all night and they are done in the morning. To rehydrate the onions, just place the onions into some really hot water and let them set for about 10 minutes or just throw them into your casserole, soup, etc. if you will be cooking them anyway.
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| Dehydrated onion. |
These dehydrated chopped onions go in my Salisbury Steak recipes wonderfully or in my Loaded Boiled Cabbage!
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Thank you for sharing - always wonderful to learn new tips and tricks! We have a garden and as it is winter right now, we are starting to plan what we will be planting come springtime! Can't wait:-). Blessings, Kelly-Anne
ReplyDeleteKelly-Anne, I appreciate you stopping by my blog. Where do you live at?
DeleteThanks for sharing this post on the Art of Home-Making as well! I love all food preservation ideas. I think I will try and dehydrate our excess onions this year. Thanks for the inspiration! Please join us again next week...
ReplyDeleteJES, I have been terribly busy but will get back to linking up with you again each week!
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