Posted on 03/26/2020 7:43:36 PM PDT by nickcarraway
You can save money, cut down on food waste, and extract more flavor from your produce by keeping and using these precious scraps.
For many cooks, onions and garlic are essential -- but most people don't know there's a lot of flavor in their papery outer layers.
Though unpleasant to eat, the skins on both vegetables are great for infusing flavor into soups, sauces and stocks.
If you're making a pot of short ribs, you can cut an onion in half and throw it in, skin and all. You'll just to remove it when the meat is finished cooking, but the flavor will still be there.
Even if you're not a fan of braising, save those onion and garlic skins for making stock. Just put them in a pot and simmer gently for several hours. Then, freeze until you need to use it.
Whatever you do, hang on to those onion and garlic skins to get all the flavor you can from your groceries. It’s good for the environment, your tastebuds, and your wallet.
Are you an Amy Dacyczyn fan?
I can attest. I caramelized ten pounds at a time. Scraps and skins get steamed for 90 minutes then the broth is reduced to near syrup. Onion sugar!
ours go to the chicken pen where they are either eaten and pooped, or composted. Either way, they are back in the garden soil next Spring.
You'll be told what to with it later.
Mmmm skins maybe for simmering in chicken bone stock. Easy to strain out when done. Otherwise meh — skins go to the compost pail.
I'm going to investigate the commercial onion cultivating methods now.
Or just put the cloves of garlic in the pot without cutting it.
When I was a kid, I used to love to pull to soft cooked clove out of the stew. Then I’d squish the soft garlic out of the skin in my mouth. When you’re a kid, you don’t realize just how odd things are till later. But, we were from Espana and garlic is life.
great advice thanks
Nothing better than taters and onions fried in bacon grease with a pot of beans and some cornbread. :)
Thought you were going to distill it...
If you’ve ever grown onions you know that those skins are the top layers of the onions which have dehydrated.
Now you’re talking.
Speaking of whole onions (halved), try this amazing simple sauce from Smitten Kitchen. This stuff is rich and coats pasta like nobody's business.
I’ve been using part of the skins lately. Not the outer, most outer part but much of the rest. I just put them into whatever device I’m chopping with.
Or I’ll shred them with the knife and then right into the meat.
You don’t eat the chicken skin? Very disturbing.
been doing this for years...same with the ends of celery...
Now THAT’s my kind of recipe! Thanks.
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