Know your onions and enjoy them

ONIONS are an easy crop. Water and weed – that’s about it. But in summer, you need to watch them to see whether they’ve flopped. When the leaves lie down in the row, it means the bulbs have stopped growing and are ready for harvest.

When this happens, check the weather. It’s best to pull onions during a sunny spell. Simply lift them and lay the whole plants on the ground in tidy rows to dry out and cure.

The idea is to let the tops turn brown, all the way down to the bulbs, so that the necks will tighten and seal the bulb against deterioration. A brief shower is harmless, but if genuine rain is coming, bring them under cover to finish the job. Spread them on a floor, table or screen in a place that’s well ventilated and dry.

Soft-neck garlic can be harvested like onions. Hard-neck garlic is pulled when the tops start to brown but there are still about six green leaves on top. Bring both under cover right away to dry and cure.

New onions and garlic can be eaten immediately and are outstanding when fresh, but their main virtue is that they last many months in storage. An ideal space is dark, cold but not moist like a cellar.

Like many cooks, though, I don’t feel secure unless I have a working stash of onions and garlic within easy reach. In the kitchen there’s always a bucket, bin or basket – anything that works, but never the fridge, where too much moisture might make them rot.

You can also treat them as a kitchen display. This concept appeals to anyone who likes rustic kitchen decor, but even if the theme is stainless-steel modern, the sight of onions and garlic in a kitchen gives one a feeling that the cook cares about flavour and that the upcoming meal will not be bland. Hanging food-pantries are picturesque, especially if your kitchen ceiling has exposed beams from which to suspend them, but they have limitations. Dried red chillies lose colour from too much light. So do bundles of upside-down herbs. Both gather dust. But none of that happens to onions and garlic, which are neatly protected by their skins. So you can braid their tops to form a tidy hanging column and snip off one at a time as needed.

Normally you would cut off your onions’ dry foliage as soon as the necks have cured, but if you’re going to braid them, leave it on. Simply tie three onions together tightly at the neck with jute or sisal twine, then braid, as you would a pigtail. – The Washington Post

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