Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Peel, rinse and slice the onions. I like to slice them very thin.
- Put the red onion slices in a bowl and massage the salt into the slices for a few minutes. You'll notice that the onions will release their juices (sweat) and create a brine in the bowl. The onions will break down and start to soften as you massage them. When the onions no longer feel crisp, they're ready, this should take about 5 minutes.
- You can add a few peppercorns, red pepper flakes, garlic cloves or even a few jalapeno peppers to the onion slices for additional flavor, if you like.
- Put the onion slices and the juice in a wide mouth pint size mason jar. Push the onion slices down into the jar. Insert a fermentation weight to keep everything under the brine and screw on a fermentation lid. If there is not enough brine from the onion juices you can top it off with a 2% saltwater brine (1 cup or 250ml water mixed with 5 grams salt)
- Let the red onions ferment for 3-7 days at room temperature. You can test them any time after 3 days. If they aren’t fermented enough for you, put the weight and lid back on and let them ferment longer.
- Once the onions are fermented to your liking, remove the lid and fermentation weight, and store in airtight containers in the refrigerator for up to 3 months.
Notes
If you want to ferment more or less than 1 pound of onion slices, you can use the instructions below to figure out how much salt you need.
Weigh the onions in grams and then multiply that number by .02 (2%) to get the number of grams of salt you will need.
Weigh the salt (different salts have different weights per volume; for example, finer salts will weigh more per tablespoon than coarse salts.)