freezing onions?

[grendlesmoder]

These wonderful long red sweet onions from Tropea are in season, and the season is pretty short. I wondered if there are ways to make them last longer, and is there a way to freeze onions - if i slice them and package them airtight, can they freeze (for sauteeing, of course, the texture of them raw will change from freezing) or is it necessary to sautee them first? Any ideas?

[mark1]

Think I can help you with both questions. I get 50 lbs. of vidalias every year from a grower in Georgia and so store a lot of the onions for some time. Re him the the vidalia org, do the following and it works for whatever reason. Wrap the onions you want to store in newspaper, individually that is, and put them in the veggie bin in your fridge, they should last for months if you need to keep them that long.
Re freezing, no need to blanch or saute, wash, peel and chop into halves or quarters and put them into ziplock or freezer bags, pressing as much air out as you can and freeze them. Break off pieces as needed.

[grendlesmoder]

Thanks so much mark1. Yay. now i can go to the market and buy several braids of onions and they won't dry out and rot.

[cjs]

go for it - I've frozen onions for years, when the kids were home, what a Godsend to have them all ready to use.

[thecooktoo]

I have 5 or 6 pounds of diced onions in the freezer right now, along with two or three pounds of carrots and celery. See a pattern here? These are the result of Basic Cooking Skills Classes that I teach.

In the knife skills classes that I teach, we use celery to practice the "sliding" motion use of the chefs knife; then we use carrots to practice the julienne...and finally everybody has to dice at least two onions to my satisfaction.

And finally everybody cuts up a half chicken. Wing tips, and frames come home, mire poix out of the freezer and 8 gallons of chicken stock is the end result.

A couple of months ago ended up with a lot more onions than I needed and made a huge batch of French Onion Soup...now packaged nicely in the freezer, ready for that cold fall weather.

Jim

[mark1]

Wish we could get some Tropea red onions here, but it looks like nobody is importing them for the markets, and haven't found an online source, oh well.

[ChezLeRecherche]

Do you have any trouble keeping the stock clear when you use frozen and thawed mire poix?

[thecooktoo]

Have never had a problem with the stock being too cloudy, but quite honestly I don't pay too much attention to it. I don't even fine filter it. I just run it through a colander and pack it in quart size ziplock bags, freeze them on a sheet tray and stack them in the corner of the freezer when solid.

The stock is for my use at home, I can't take it out to cook with it anyway. If I want to make a clarified stock I just go the egg white and protein route.

If I need to make it for use outside I go over to my son's cooking school and make it there and store it in his freezer.

Jim