Home Made Christmas Preparations = Pickled Onions or Shallots (1)

Before I start with the Christmas cake, you can still get Shallots/Onions in the shops and you have enough time to prepare them for your Christmas feasting if you do them now.  Then you will have something savoury to serve with all those cold cuts of meat, cheese, pate and other bits and bobs.  After the main meals we always clear up the cold cuts and often enjoy these the most as after big dinners your stomach tends to get a little full and we get a little un-comfy as a result.  so now is the ideal time to pop them up.  They are not difficult to do and you will still have plenty after Christmas to eat into the New Year.  It works out cheaper than buying them already prepared.  Shallots are dearer than the pickling onions - the Shallots have more tang to them.  Not comfortable about spicing your own vinegar buy the jars of Sarsons pickling vinegar which is already pre-spiced and then you have the jars to pop the pickled onions/Shallots in.  You may need another container to put the remnants of the vinegar in.  This is nice on fish and chips.

I have posted before about Pickled Shallots/Pickling Onions and the links are below with the instructions on how to make them. The picture below shows peeled shallots there are however a couple of normal pickling onions in there.  They are the yellow ones as shallots tend to be purple and all sorts of other colours as well.

Pickled Shallots/Onions Part 1

Pickled Shallots/Onions Part 2

The picture below shows the prepared Shallots in a heavy dry brine of salt which have been left overnight. 

Waitrose had shallots in yesterday when I nipped in although it is dearer to buy them this way.  You might try the market or your local greengrocer or indeed a local allotment holder as it works out cheaper to buy from them in the longer term if you can.  The Shallots are normally dearer to buy.

I hope I have persuaded you to make them.   It sounds more complicated than it actually is.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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