Onion storage: what have you tried?

[humblehillsfarm]

a root cellar would be great, but not everyone can have one (water table too high, etc). My FIL has a huge garden and orchard, and does not sell anything. They store, give away, or process everything. For this purpose, he built a walk-in cold room in his garage. He altered an A/C window unit thermostat so that he could get it to cool down lower than the pre-set temp limits. But it is not refrigeration temps, so no meat or dairy storage, for sure. It has worked well for him for at least 10 years. He lives in a very dry climate, and I am not aware that he adds any humidity, but I'm not certain on that. We've talked about doing this in our barn as we have an area under the loft stairs that would be a workable and convenient space.

However, for now, pop in your contacts to help resist the crying (always helped me, but alas, I no longer use contacts) and borrow a friends food processor, if you are able, and slice or chop away! Out side, perhaps.

Congrats on the large crop. Ours wasn't great - many rotted in the ground or didn't grow very large. But, first time ever growing onions, so I'm on a learning curve.

We have this creepy old bathroom from the 50s attached as an in-ground basement attachment that was boarded up in the 70s. It’s very, very damp down there but with the help of a possible AC I imagine we could get the temps much closer to root-cellar level. I never considered that as an option!!

I’d love to have a cellar though.

This was my first year with onions. I chose a yellow and a white variety. The white variety “ring master” was the most successful. The bulbs are huge and many of the tops haven’t flopped over for those yet. The yellow ones matured faster and are much smaller, though they were meant to be for the long term storage. I have them curing outside on my grill doors.

 

[B40chick]

An FFA boy at church sells 10 lb. Bags of Vidalia onions. It takes me a while to use that many. I get panty hose. If you have old ones, use them, or go to thrift store or dollar store to get cheap ones. Cut the panty part off and use the legs. Put an onion in, tie a knot, put second in, tie a knot, etc. Fill up the stocking. I tie these to a rod in my laundry room. Cut bottom one off when you want to use one, below the knot that is holding the onion above it. All the rest remain hanging. Because there are no pressure points, they keep longer. If one goes bad, it is separated from the others and less likely to transfer rot.
So maybe you can hang some, dry some, and freeze some.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I am going to try all three but keep back roughly half for storage at least for now. I let all of my celery go to seed and it dawned on me I could have froze it too! This was my first year growing celery.

 

[SheaLoner]

I am going to try all three but keep back roughly half for storage at least for now. I let all of my celery go to seed and it dawned on me I could have froze it too! This was my first year growing celery.

Celery is Great frozen! I pre chop and store in a large ziplock in the freezer, just grab a handfull or 2 as needed. I also freeze the leafy bits as They are Excellent additions to stock.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

Celery is Great frozen! I pre chop and store in a large ziplock in the freezer, just grab a handfull or 2 as needed. I also freeze the leafy bits as They are Excellent additions to stock.

Unfortunately it’s way too late for my celery. It’s not good looking. If I had cut it a month ago I would have had enough celery to last me for months

 

[humblehillsfarm]

So far all of the onions are curing because I don’t have time to do anything else during the work week.

 

[Sunshine_Chick]

If your knife is sharp enough you will not cry from chopping onions. Also you can carmelize them & then freeze them - you know they shrink down so much when you cook them. I normally cook 3 pounds at a time since here they're sold in 3 lb bags.

 

[RoseHawke]

For fresh onions it very much depends on the variety. From what I've seen most of those that store well are "long day" onions. Unfortunately here I can only grow "short day" varieties although the sweet onions do very well and I pulled a few this year that are a third again as large as a softball. The best way I've stored them is to slice with a very sharp knife, then dice using something similar to one of these . Then we vacuum pack with a Foodsaver and freeze them, although our big freezer is a deep freeze, i.e. not "frost free". It looks like the "vidalia chop wizard" is no longer available, but an Amazon search for "onion chopper" does find a lot of similar tools. I've used onions this way that are 2-3 years old and they're just as nice as the day they were harvested.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

For fresh onions it very much depends on the variety. From what I've seen most of those that store well are "long day" onions. Unfortunately here I can only grow "short day" varieties although the sweet onions do very well and I pulled a few this year that are a third again as large as a softball. The best way I've stored them is to slice with a very sharp knife, then dice using something similar to one of these . Then we vacuum pack with a Foodsaver and freeze them, although our big freezer is a deep freeze, i.e. not "frost free". It looks like the "vidalia chop wizard" is no longer available, but an Amazon search for "onion chopper" does find a lot of similar tools. I've used onions this way that are 2-3 years old and they're just as nice as the day they were harvested.

I LOVE my FoodSaver! I can't remember the exact names of the onions but the yellow onions I got were supposed to be good fro 3-4 months of storage but were very small. The white onions are enormous but only good for 1-2 months of storage. So far I still have them hanging in my garage. I am hoping they can hang out there for a few weeks while I manage other produce. Canning tomatoes every weekend!

 

[RoseHawke]

Aren't Foodsavers wonderful ? I hate the single use plastic, but this is one of those things that it's best for. Someday we'll have a way to "deconstruct" plastic and the pollution caused by it won't be such a problem. These are the last of the fresh onions, and probably the biggest. Most of them are in the freezer now. The, smaller, rounder ones are some sort of Bermuda onions, the big flatter ones are, I believe, 'Candy', all from Dixondale Farms.