Gardening Advice & Tips for Irish Gardeners

Continuing on with our series of how to freeze vegetables, this post will deal with the simple task of freezing onions. People often ask me about what you can or can't freeze and are surprised to find out that you can indeed freeze onions and in fact, are one of the easiest vegetables to freeze.

The steps below outline the procedure for freezing your onions.

Step 1 - Pull your Onions

As usual, if you have got them from the store or market, you can ignore this step.

Once you have them pulled, just leave the to dry out a bit, somehwere sunny. I just leave them on the garden table and let the sun and wind do the rest. It doesn't take too long for them to dry out. A few hours sunbathing should do nicely!

For the purposes of this bog post, I actually had them pulled the day before.

Step 2 - Peel, Wash & Cut the Onions

Peel & wash your onions as usual and cut to the desired size you require. I normally just cut them into medium sized chunks. I add them to stir frys, make soup etc from them in winter so am not too fussed about the shape but you can be as particular as you like.

Step 3 - Freeze the Onions on Greaseproof Paper

The next stage of the process is to freeze the onions. Unlike nearly every other process I use to freeze various fruit and vegetables where I just bag them and give them a periodic rustle around while freezing, onions, I've found, do not respond well to this and no matter what you do, you will just end up with a great big frozen clump of chopped onions.

To get around this problem, here's what I do.

Once you have the onions washed and cut, lay out a sheet of greaseproof paper in your freezer. Make sure that you lay enough that you can have a couple of inches on the vertical for lifting them out later on. Once you have the greaseproof paper in place, place your chopped onions onto the sheet and spread around, making sure not to heap them in any great quantity. A couple of layers is probably ok. They are going to stick together anyway, so this is just a minimizing excercise. Shut the freezer door and wait 2-3 hours. Once frozen, carefully remove the frozen onions by lifting the edges of the greaseproof paper.

Another point to note and I have to say I didn't know this the first time that I froze my surplus onions is that the onions you freeze have a really strong smell while freezing in the freezer, strong enough that you can smell them outside the freezer! So be aware of this fact and if you have a freezer in the shed or garage, maybe this is the place for them in the initial period of freezing. It might also be a concern for you if you have something in the freezer that may absorb the smell of the onion. It's ok if a steak absorbs the onion smell, might be quite nice in fact but if you have something like frozen baked goods like sponges, breads etc, It might not end well for you, so be warned!!!

Step 4 - Bag the Frozen Onions

Once you have them out of the freezer, bag the onions as you see fit, removing as much air as possible to avoid freezer burn and place back in the freezer.

As with pretty much all frozen veg, onions are best cooked from frozen. You can thaw and eat but they are not as nice and they don't retain their texture as well.