Couple words about onions
This is the time of year when it is mukluks one week and T-shirts the next, but gardeners can sniff spring not far away, and that leads to thoughts of onions.
Onions are packed with propanethiol S-oxide, a combination of sulfenic acid and enzymes which is released when you cut an onion. We shed tears because when propanethiol etc., mixes with the moisture in your eyes, it turns to sulfuric acid, and I get all teary just thinking about it.
The lachrymose event might be annoying, but it is not harmful. I wash my hands often while slicing onions, and that helps briefly. However, how about this… since we seem to be phasing out those plexiglass barriers, a clever person could refurbish them into onion boxes for cutting onions – place an onion inside, reach through the convenient armholes and chop, chop, chop while you are comfortably outside the barrier protecting you from sulfurous gases. Or you can buy a vegetable chopping appliance.
Onions have traveled with humans from early on as we spread across the world. They are easy to grow and they store well. They grow underground so they prefer loose, well-drained non-clayey soil, and they are surprisingly heavy feeders. Compost is helpful for loosening the soil and adding nitrogen and other nutrients. Onions appreciate a bit of extra phosphorus from rock phosphate or bone meal.
All red, white, yellow and brown onions fall into day-length categories. Some varieties require more than 12 hours of sunshine to form bulbs, which means spring and summer. These are called long-day onions, and they are recommended for gardeners north of the center line across our country.
Short-day onions are recommended for Southern gardens, and there are also day-neutral or intermediate onions. If a gardener around here planted day-neutral onion sets in well-prepared soil soon, there should be an excellent harvest before kids go back to school.
Famous long-day varieties include Wethersfield Red, a variety from Bermuda which established itself as the main red onion crop for New England gardeners. Short-day varieties include Red Creole, Texas Super Sweet and Vidalia. Spanish Brown and Monastrell are neutral-day varieties.
My peregrinations included stops in southeastern Washington where, in the first half of summer, I would encounter pickups on the side of the road selling Walla Walla onions. The soil there has less sulfur, so the onions are sweeter. No more than a couple dozen farmers on about 350 acres produce 16 million pounds of Walla Wallas annually. The United States produces 3.1 million tons out of the world’s total of almost one hundred million tons of onions each year.
So, why do we grow so many? Shouldn’t we be growing more watermelons instead? For one thing, onions keep better than watermelons. Onions without nicks or bumps stored in a shady dry place between 35-65° might last eight months or more. They keep for about a week in the refrigerator before old age creeps in, and a glass storage container won’t absorb the smell as much.
We love our onions so much because of the health benefits and their culinary flexibility. Onions are low in calories and cholesterol but loaded with minerals and vitamins. They are high in Vitamin C and a who’s who of B vitamins which improve metabolism and red blood cell production. Research shows folks with a higher intake of onions were less likely to contract certain cancers or have cholesterol problems, and they assist with metabolism of sugars which is good for folks with diabetes.
So, eat ‘em! Clever cooks can find ways to add the health benefits of onions to almost everything except watermelons and oatmeal.
Historians maintain that the workers who built the pyramids were fed onions. So, if you intend to build a pyramid…