Thinly sliced and fermented Vidalia onions can liven many dishes with a complex sweet, sour, meaty, flavor. I love to add to scrambled eggs, fried rice, or that hidden "wow" in a salad or slaw.
I want to show you how to make a pickle that uses secondary fermentation to make a probiotic rich condiment. It’s a very easy recipe. It actually has hardly anything to remember, except the rich, umami flavor.
What actually will be happening with secondary fermentation is a very slow, not very obvious type of ferment. What is nice is we are going to be using billions of bacteria from the soy sauce (unpastuerized soy sauce) and or rice vinegar to be able to produce the fermented onions.
It’s made with just fresh onions, and equal parts of soy sauce and brown rice vinegar or rice vinegar.
Let’s go ahead and make it. You can slice or shred the onions in really any shape that you want. I use it for a condiment so I tend to make them very small. I LOVE to put these in cooked rice or cooked eggs as the final condiment. It has a really nice meaty taste. Very unique. I think you will be surprised.
It’s this simple. We process the onions, and add them to a jar size of choice. I used a half-pint jar in the video so you really can make a small amount with a little leftover onion if you think ahead.
Then for the fermenting brine it is equal parts rice vinegar and soy sauce. I prefer to use a live-culture soy sauce, and the best of the best is Nama Shoyu if you can find locally or on google search. It is aged for four years and is certified live-culture. If that is hard to find, search out a rice vinegar that is live-cultured. This is best sourced through a health food store.
If you want to add additional flavor you could also add some lime or lemon zest. All we want to be able to do is to have everything under the liquid.
We will go about four days and we will have some of the best tasting Japanese Onions pickles that you have ever had!
One more note of interest. Some onions can be fiery, sulphur bombs. Here is how to eliminate: soak the sliced onions in just enough water that has a couple tablespoons of baking soda dissolved. Let soak for 15 minutes and rinse well.
