 | |
| Sun Dried-in Jars, Caramalized and Frozen |
I harvested some onions yesterday and did several things with them. I cut the roots off an replanted - I'm hoping for some green tops to harvest as needed (this works, just it maybe too hot now for the onions to sprout again. We will see.
 | |
| onion roots planted and covered |
I also distributed the extra greens through out the garden to discourage pest bugs. I don't expect it to last long as a deterrent but for now it is good. It will dry and provide some mulch.
I already knew I wanted to dry some of the onions, but I had a lot of them. 3-4 of them filled my drying trays when chopped up. I thought caramelized onions, but they take a long time and heat up the kitchen. I frequently use the crock pot for cooking in the summer (I've even made bread) because I put it out on the patio and further keep the extra heat outside.
I went looking and found a recipe for caramelizing onions in a crock pot :-)
The suggestion was olive oil or melted butter. And this was going to be different because I was not using big fat onions I was using large scallions. I needed to get these out of the garden because the volunteer tomato and pichu berry were completely shading the onions.
(It takes about 10 months for onions to reach storage bulb size here in the desert (last year it was August.)
Chop or thinly slice your onions and toss with olive oil or melted butter to coat all. I chose to use olive oil, and put a thin amount in the crockpot first before I tossed the chopped with more.
Fill your crock pot about 3/4's full. Turn on low and let cook for about 10 hours.
Worked like a charm.
The caramelized onions will only last about a week in the frig, so I decided to freeze in a ziplock. The oil will allow me to break off chunks for use when I want to add to pasta, soup, or stew or use on a sandwich.
SOME NOTES: The aroma and flavor of these is awesome. Since I used scallions which had less density than a regular onion, I could have stopped at about 8 hours. My wonderful scallions cooked down almost to a jam and the approximate 3 cups or so of chopped reduced to about 3/4 of a cup. I was fine with that, but will keep the ratio reduction in mind for the future. The recipe I based this on said 10 hours for regular caramelized onions but if you want "jam" cook for a couple more hours.
Since I was already sun drying the other onions in the sun, and it was HOT (yesterday when I started this it got to 109+) I thought I would see what would happen with a small amount of the olive oil tossed onion in the sun. The result was significantly difference from the crock pot. Obviously the sun did not mimic the crock pot heat and moisture. We used most of the sun cooked onions on hot dogs last night and I'm using the rest of them when I use my potatoes for a potato salad later today.
After chopping the sun does all the work. The green parts dried in about half a day, but I had to take the white/red part (these are red onion / scallions) in overnight because they were not quite dry, put them out this morning for about 2 hours and they were perfectly dry.
I mentioned before that I had an opportunity to purchase a round set of dehydrator trays (without the motor) which allowed me to have more capacity for sun drying.
You can cover with paper towel as I show or one of those picnic mesh domes. I also sometimes stack the trays with their cover. This is nice and compact, but you need to rotate the trays, through out the day as, the top tray and sometimes the bottom one dry out fastest.
Anything that is not completely dry, bring in overnight so they do not start to reabsorb moisture.
As with cooking, sun drying or any drying method reduces the volume of the food with the moisture withdrawn. They store very well in mason jars and are ready to use when I need dry. I still have some dried from last summer and they are still fragrant and tasty. Always store in the cool, dry and dark to preserve flavor and aroma.
Here are some links to a few of my prior blog posts on sun drying.
Homemade dried vegetable bouillon - a mix of my herbs and veggies
Sun Dried Tomatoes
Sun Drying Fruit and Herbs
Finally, while you are harvesting, don't forget to let some of your beloved veggies and herbs go to flower and seed so you can harvest the mature and dry seed for re-sowing later.
This is "regional adaptation" at its best. What did great in your garden will produce subsequent generations of stronger and more adapted plants.
Find me on Facebook
Have a great week in, and "from" the garden,
-- Catherine, The Herb Lady
herbs2u.net
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe in the upper side bar link, to get all my posts!
Disclaimer: Clicking on links on this blog may earn me a small commission if you purchase something. Your price does not change.
No comments:
Post a Comment