What do you do with one red onion? The best answer: make quick pickled red onions. Pickled red onions are sweet, beautiful and perfect sprinkled on everything from tacos to burgers to nachos, sandwiches or salads. Plus they’re wonderful to snack on as well. And bonus: no fancy canning equipment required!
My friend Mary over at Cooking with Mary and Friends makes the most beautiful pickled onions. I’ve always wanted to try making them. But she uses the water bath canning method. Plus she cans 3 lb. of red onions in one shot. If you’ve got a lot of red onions, that’s awesome. But what if you have only one? And what if you’re not a canning expert? Or what if you don’t want to heat up the kitchen with water batch canning? No worries! I’ve got you covered. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with this recipe. If you love the red pickled onions they serve at restaurants, you’re going to adore this simple, small batch refrigerator pickle recipe.
On the other hand, what if you DO have a bunch of red onions? Or what if you want pickled onions you can store on a shelf in your pantry? Then head over to Mary’s blog and check out her recipe.
What drove me to make quick pickled red onions?
We went out to eat yesterday. And I ordered a burger and a salad. Quite often restaurants will serve burgers with pickled red onions. And that’s awesome. But this time, they put the pickled red onions on my salad! I was delighted. Those pretty onions tasted SO good with the fresh greens, juicy tomatoes, and the chunky blue cheese dressing. The whole time, I was thinking to myself, “I really need to make some pickled red onions so I can have this at home.”
Then today I woke up and our air conditioning was broken. And get this: the forecast called for a 97 degree day: a real scorcher! I called my favorite HVAC company answering service. Much to my surprise, he got the tech on call on the line. I explained what was wrong. Can you believe, he said he’d be here in 30 – 45 minutes? Such amazing news for a sweaty girl on a hot Sunday in July.
But then also, I couldn’t go do errands or anything while he was here fixing things. And I didn’t want to heat up the house any more than it already was either. I remembered those pickled onions. And I thought: this is the perfect project that won’t heat up the kitchen. So now I’m just happy as a clam. I have a working air conditioner AND a whole jar of pretty pickled red onions!
Whatever drives YOU to make these, I think you’re going to love them.
I adapted this recipe from One Dish Kitchen and Cooking with Mary and Friends.
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Quick Pickled Red Onions (small batch)
- Prep Time: 5 min
- Cook Time: 5 min
- Total Time: 10 min
- Yield: 1 pint 1x
- Category: Sides
- Method: Pickled
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup raw apple cider vinegar
- Juice of 1/2 lemon or lime
- 2 Tablespoons honey or sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon canning & pickling salt
- 1 large red onion
- 1 teaspoon mustard seeds and a few whole cloves OR 1 teaspoon pickling spice
- 1 bay leaf
Instructions
- In a small saucepan, heat the water, vinegar, honey or sugar and salt and stir until boiling and everything is fully dissolved. Set aside briefly.
- Put the spices in a pint (or larger) glass jar. Peel the onion, then halve it vertically and slice into 1/4 inch slices. Stuff the onion slices in the jar, then slowly pour the hot vinegar mixture over to cover the onions.
- Cover and let sit for about 30 minutes, then refrigerate.
Notes
You can use any clean glass jar–it doesn’t have to be anything special, but you do want glass. I used a spaghetti sauce jar after I had removed the label and washed it in the dishwasher.
If you have extra pickling juice, put it in a covered jar and save it for next time.
If you want spicy pickled onions: add whole peppercorns, sliced jalapeno or red pepper flakes. If you want sweeter pickles, double or triple the honey or sugar used here.
RECIPE SOURCE: Sumptuous Spoonfuls – https://www.sumptuousspoonfuls.com/ … © Copyright 2022, Sumptuous Spoonfuls. All images & content are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to publish any of my images, please ask first. If you want to republish this recipe as your own, please re-write the recipe in your own words or link back to this post for the recipe.
2 comments
This was so easy to make and turned out so nice and juicy!! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I’m so excited that you liked it, Sam! Thanks for commenting. 🙂