Monday 11 October 2010

How to string onions

First grow your onions...easier said than done in my experience. I tried growing onions from seed for the first time this year. They are an Italian torpedo shaped one. They didn't grow very big but there were just enough to make a string. Globe shaped ones would be a lot easier to make a decent string.

Anyhow here's how to string your onions.
Cut a 4 ft length for a two foot string.

Fold it in half and tie the closed loop end around the neck of your first onion.


Tie the two loose ends together to form a continuous loop.

Hang the loop from a peg with the onion weighing it down from the bottom.






Take your second onion bulb and hold it next to the first.

Feed the onion top through the loop from front to back and then wrap the onion top all the way around the  string to the left and then around the string to the right in a complete figure of eight maintaining downward pressure as you go. Leave the excess dangling. It can be trimmed later once well dried if you are worried about appearance.




Now take your next onion and in the same way wrap it around the right and then the left strings with the bulb dangling alongside its neighbours.

Carry on with successive onions.



Once you have run out of onions or feel the sring has got too heavy, take the string off the peg and tie a knot shortening the string loop to the top of the onion leaf  plait.


Job done.

If I can do this with these torpedo onions anyone can do it with ordinary ones!

I learned this technique from "Vegmonkey and Mrs" a blog that stopped over a year ago - I'm keeping the information flowing around the net.

9 comments:

  1. Thanks. I never knew how to do this. Now if I could just get those onions to grow...

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  2. I always wondered how to do this....I have always tried to tie them up with little success....is it the same for garlic??

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  3. I find the best method is to ask the wife to crochet a string bag and put them all in there ;>) Granted it doesn't look as nice, but it's quicker - for me anyway!

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  4. In the past I've resorted to storing onions in an old stocking - this will look much snazzier! Cheers Mal and Monkeyveg.

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  5. Great pictures! it is so hard to illustrate this, I've tried several times!

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  6. I must grow onions, just so I can do that. Bloody hell, 2011 was supposed to be a year of reduced crops, but I have more than I did this year, and the list is growing...

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  7. I wanted to have a go at stringing my onion so now I know how. I was going to plait them like garlic but this didn't seem right and the strings would have been really long!!

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  8. You know you've got an alternative career in the making with onion-stringing demos.

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