Smoked and Pickled Green Onions

This recipe comes straight from Preservation Kitchen, a book I highly recommend. I adjusted the quantities a bit because I am using green onions instead of spring onions and put those green onions into pint and half jars.

The original recipe calls for a stovetop smoker. If you do not have one, instructions are provided in the book for making your own! Even that felt like too much work, so I devised a different plan to smoke the onions.

First, I soaked about half a cup of wood chips in a bowl of water. The chips need to soaked for at least 30 minutes before using.

Next, I put six charcoal briquettes into a chimney and tried to light them. It took several tries, it seems that lighting a few briquettes is much more difficult than lighting a few dozen. While the coals where getting hot, I prepped the onions, cutting off the furry ends and sizing them to fit the jars.

On a sheet pan I placed parchment paper, which turned out to be unnecessary. I was not certain how the hot coal thing was going to work so I used my ugliest sheet pan, just in case it needed to be recycled after this adventure. It did not.

I then fashioned a rectangle out of heavy duty foil that fit the center of the pan. This is where I planned to put my charcoal and wood chips, so it needed tallish sides.

I used three pounds of green onions for four pint and half jars. You could also do pint jars using the same amount of onions.

Foil tray in the middle of the sheet pan, prepped onions on either side. Hot coals in the foil tray followed by soaked wood chips, then the whole thing is covered with foil. Not too tight, you ned to let some oxygen in there. Then I let it sit for 17 minutes. The original recipe says 12 minutes, but my method was not generating the same amount of smoke as a stovetop smoker, so I decided to let it sit the extra five minutes.

They are beautiful! Just warm and glistening and full of smokey goodness.

From there I stuffed the onions into the jars, added a few springs of thyme, covered with hot brine and sent them to the water bath. Pack those jars tightly, and I mean tightly. The onions are going to shrink in the hot water bath and shrink equals float. Tight is good. I used three times the amount of brine for four pint and half jars. 10 minutes for pints, 15 minutes for pint and half.

A recipe that is easy to make in the spring/summer when green onions are local, but just an easy to make in the winter when the onions are from California but you have an itch to play with jars.

Smoked and Pickled Spring Onions

1 1/2 pounds spring onions, root ends trimmed

10 ounces champagne vinegar

10 ounces water

2 ounces honey

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 springs thyme

 

Smoke the onions for 12 minutes.

In a pot, bring the vinegar, water, honey, and salt to a biol. Keep hot.

Trim onions to fit jars leaving 1/2 inch headspace.

Pack jars tightly with onions and slide two sprigs of thyme down the side of each jar. Fill with hot brine, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.

Process is a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Instructions for water bath canning can be found here.

Makes 3 pints.

 

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Comments

[Julie]

Oh, those sound so good!

[Eileen]

Smoked AND pickled green onions? Ok, I'm officially intrigued--especially because I have a gardenful of green onions hanging out in my backyard.

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