Yesterday evening I topped, tailed and then peeled the small to medium sized ones and ended up with two and a half kilos of fine specimens. These I placed in a large bowl and sprinkled over 70g of sea salt; giving the whole thing a good stir round to ensure that the salt was evenly distributed. I covered them with a clean tea towel and left (well out of dog reach) until I got home from work today. If you leave them lie this for any longer than 24 hours they will lose their crunch.
Today I put three litres of pickling vinegar into a large stainless steel saucepan and added 12 teaspoons of pickling spice (4 per litre) and 170g of sugar per litre (680g). I heated this gently until all the sugar had dissolved. It doesn't take much heat at all but, most importantly, don't let the mixture burn!
Whilst this was going on I sterilised the three (one litre capacity) vinegar jars and one extra jar I had just in case the onions didn't fit. The sterilisation was simple. All I did was put the jars and lids on the quick half-hour dishwasher cycle and let them cool down a bit; upturned on clean kitchen roll.
The onions went into the jars (good job I did the extra one - moral of this story is to always have an extra sterilised jar just in case!!) and the spiced vinegar was poured over the top. The jars were then gently tapped to release any air pockets. On went the tops and the jars left to cool. I'll store them out of the light in a cupboard and we'll try the first batch with leftovers on Christmas Day - or maybe Christmas Eve with some wine and cheese!
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