Knowing your Onions – from your Shallots
Jonathan >
To ‘know your onions’ is a slang expression believed to originate in the UK in the 1920s, and means to be particularly knowledgeable about a subject. It is believed by some to originally refer to knowledgeableness concerning English language usage, referring to the authoritative text on the subject – by one Charles Talbot Onions.
Now I certainly don’t claim any kind of expertise about onions, but I have learned that knowing your onions from your shallots is to understand that the latter are so much more than miniature onions, or that they grow in clusters, not singly.
Shallots are also milder than onions, and sweeter too. They’re much easier to pack into jars, pickled in vinegar, and better-suited to salads.
Shalots pickled for our winter stores.
But a key advantage is that – for us, at least, they are quicker to mature than onions, and more likely to ripen and dry fully in our soft summer sunshine and short growing season. In an especially good summer – especially the late summer, onions will out-perform shallots in terms of yield, but in an average year are more likely to provide a poor return compared to shallots. If onions are a gamble, shallots are a pleasant ramble.
Onions or shallots, alike, the scent in the sheds as they dry is powerfully evocative : wholesomeness and health ; soil and sufficiency ; labour and nature. The scent, the rustle of the drying leaves – the shape and weight of the bulbs, too, make me want to linger awhile, contented with life.
The pickled shallots are just for us, but onions and shalots alike go into most the chutneys we sell in the garden shop of the Hebridean Woolshed.
By the way, stringing shalots did not work out : many of the shalots started to rot at the neck. I broke up the string, cut off most of the dried leaves, and stored them in trays with the rest. That’s the same result as the last time I tried – with onions – back in the summer of 1979, in Wetheral, Cumbria : our first ever crop of onions in our first garden.
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Oh how I love both! A staple of life for me!
They all look delicious. I am a big fan of onions. I cook with onions all the time! I also cook with garlic at the same time generally so there are no vampires around this house!
Is it possible to braid the onions together by thier tops and dry them that way? Or perhaps to only store them hanging up as a braid?
I had no idea that shallots grew in this way in clumps or of the slang term of “know your onions.”
One day when I grow vegetables again, I will make sure to grow shallots. I am sure that shallots in chicken soup is lovely!
I wanted to make sure I told you that I am spinning up that delicious dark wool I purchased from you. It is turning out just fabulous. I suspect I will use it in weaving. What a wonderful dark rich color! It is the darkest wool I have ever spun up. Thank you again for providing me with such joy!
Have a flock!
D > It’s a marvel to us how useful onions are – in all their forms! We’ve tried braiding onions different ways, but though the braiding is successful, the keeping/storing has not been. I think it’s likely to be down to the fact that our maritime climate is not warm enough, nor dry enough, for long enough, to very thoroughly dry the bulbs (most critically at the neck), and the braiding results in the necks not being ventilated … Result : fungal rot set in, always starting at the neck, and spreading from one bullb to the next. Wool : J and are glad you’re making good use of the Hebridean rovings. They’ve gone to all five continents … or is that four? Anyway, not Antarctica … yet! We’re expecting a large party of international visitors to Uist – participants in a wool conference – to come to the Hebridean Woolshed. We have no data to confirm it, but our hunch is that somewhere between a quarter and a third of our Hebridean Woolshed sales are to international visitors to Uist, or sold direct abroad through internet sales.