Homemade Pickled Red Onions

I've been product testing the home meal delivery companies (so far, Blue Apron, Home Chef, and Plated) and many of their recipes call for onions.

Bret can't eat onions (they're not nice to him - he'd love me telling you that). Instead of real onion, I use onion powder, so now we have quite the collection of red onions from the delivery guys!

Bret suggested French Onion Soup, but I thought that would be strange with red onions. Since I love pickles and pickled vegetables, I decided on Homemade Pickled Red Onions.

I combined a few recipes and came up with these spicy, tangy pickled onions. It makes a ton of them, so you can halve it if you like.

You can also leave out the jalapeno and hatch chile, but I happened to have them in the refrigerator and made good use of them.

After about an hour, the purpley-red onions became the pretty pink color in the photo. And oh that oniony pickled fragrance when you open the lid! It's heavenly.

These Homemade Pickled Red Onions are so easy to throw together and you can use them on so many things - hot dogs, burgers, tacos - anything savory that you can think of. They're even great right out of the jar. Crunchy, tangy and tasty.

I'm planning on giving some of these away because they still taste oniony and Bret won't eat them, but I'll keep half of them for me!

If you've ever wanted to learn to pickle something, start with these onions. It's so very easy!

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Homemade Pickled Red Onions

Yield: 1 quart

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Outstanding spicy, tangy juice that could be used to pickle just about any vegetable! 

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Ingredients

• 1 C apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 3 teaspoon kosher salt
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 1 ½ C hot water
• 2 medium red/purple onions
• 1 small fresh jalapeno (seeded) , (optional)
• ½ small fresh hatch chile (seeded), (optional)

Instructions

1. Whisk the vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper into the hot water and whisk until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Cut the red onion in half from stem to end, lay flat side down, and then thinly slice.  Cut off the jalapeno stem and cut in half from stem end lengthwise and remove the seeds - slice long ways into about ¼" strips.  Do the same with the hatch chile if you're using them. 
3. Stuff half the onion into a large quart jar, then layer with the jalapeno and chile (if you're using them), then finish with the rest of the onion.  Pour the vinegar mixture over the top, gently pressing down the onions to fit.  Put the lid on tightly and set out on the counter for about 30 minutes.  Then refrigerate.
4. Should stay good in the refrigerator for 2-4 weeks.

Notes

Tips and Stuff:

You know this, but.....don't touch your eyes after cutting the jalapeno and chiles (or use plastic gloves).

You really don't have to use the hot stuff - I just like spicy stuff!

You can easily halve the ingredients and use one onion and a pint jar.

Nutrition Information:

Yield: 10 Serving Size: 1 serving
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 25Total Fat: 0gSaturated Fat: 0gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 0gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 381mgCarbohydrates: 5gFiber: 0gSugar: 4gProtein: 0g

Nutrition Values are Approximate