Quick Pickled Red Onions
Thin red onion slices covered in warm sweet-sharp brine, bright magenta and ready to eat in half an hour.
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 5 min
- Total
- 15 min
- Serves
- 12
- Revisions
- 2
Allergens
- Sulphites
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Method
Slice each onion half 2-3mm thick from root to tip, cutting with the lines in the onion rather than across them, so the slices hold their shape instead of collapsing into threads.
Pack the slices into a clean 750ml jar, pressing them down without crushing them.
Put the vinegar, water, sugar, fine salt, peppercorns, coriander seeds and bay leaf into a small pan.
Warm over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring, until the sugar and salt have dissolved and steam is coming off the surface.
Take the pan off the heat before it boils.
Pour the warm brine and the whole spices over the onions.
The brine goes on warm rather than cold or boiling. Warm brine slackens the onion just enough to take the vinegar up within half an hour, where a cold brine needs a day to do the same; brine poured on at a boil goes too far the other way and cooks the slices limp, and they never get their snap back.
Press the slices under the surface with a spoon. Anything standing above the brine stays raw and browns.
Leave the open jar at room temperature for 30 minutes, until the slices have turned bright magenta right through and slackened without going floppy.
Put the lid on once the jar is no longer warm and move it to the fridge.
Keep them refrigerated and treat them as a fresh food rather than a preserve. Nothing here has been heat-processed and the brine is cut with an equal volume of water, so it is well short of the acidity a shelf-stable pickle needs — a jar of these left in a cupboard is not safe to eat.
Use them within two weeks, while the colour is still bright and the slices still snap.
Spoon them over the shakshuka in this collection, where they cut the sweetness of the cooked peppers.
Fold them through the lemony chickpea and herb salad in place of the raw onion it macerates in lemon juice.
Roll them into the skillet flatbreads with anything rich.
Set a small bowl of them beside the slow-braised beef shin, where sharp acid does more against the fat than another herb would.
Note that the smashed cucumber salad in this collection works on the same principle, salt and acid on a crisp watery vegetable, but is dressed to be eaten the same day rather than kept.