Guest Essay: How To Harvest Wild Onions

Now that spring is on the way, it's time to get out in our fields and forests and bring home some wild goodness. My friend, author Hank Shaw, is an authority on hunting, foraging and cooking all manner of wild things—his four books on those topics are considered definitive guides—and his post on harvesting wild onions is particularly pertinent to this season.

Ramps, wild onions, wild garlic. These are some of our best wild foods come springtime.

More than 100 species of wild alliums call North America home—allium being the genus covering both onions and garlic—but it is the Eastern ramp, Allium tricoccum, that has been all the rage among chefs in recent years. They’ve become so popular I even see chefs here in California using them with abandon; no native ramp grows within 2,000 miles of San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Ramps.

Locavore issues aside, perhaps the trendiest thing about ramps right now is to bemoan their overharvest.

Is this happening? Certainly, in some places. I’ve seen some startling before and after photos. But most professional foragers I know harvest the same patches of ramps every year — and some of these folks have been picking for 30+ years. They know, as well as any good farmer, that you don’t eat your seed corn. The sustainability of any bulb, corm, root or rhizome harvest all hinges on how you pick the plant.

Here’s how you do it.

First and foremost, you must find your onions. Ramps are showy onions with large, wide leaves. They’re pretty easy to spot, especially in Eastern woodlands, where they can literally carpet the forest floor for acres. Most wild onions are not so easily located, although one, the invasive three-cornered leek of California and Oregon, A. triquetrum, is almost as gaudy as the ramp.

Wild onions in situ.

There’s an onion for pretty much every environment, from deserts to forests to streamsides to lawns to high above the treeline in Alpine meadows. My favorite is the dusky onion, A. campanulatum, which is common in the mountains from California to British Columbia.

Onions, being bulb plants, send up grasslike shoots first. This can be as early as January in the Bay Area for the three-cornered leek, to mid-July for Alpine onions. Onions, in general, like to live in large troops: It’s weird to find just one onion.

A great many onions have a rosy blush to the base of their stems. But not all. Your nose is your best tool when trying to figure out if that grassy shoot you are looking at is an onion. Anything that looks like an onion that also smells like an onion is an onion. Lots of bulbs, some of them poisonous, can look like an onion, but none will also smell like one, too.

A patch of wild onions.

Once you’ve found your onions, look at the patch. Are there only a few onions there? Or does the patch have hundreds or even thousands of plants? If there are only a few, consider moving on. I like to pick patches with at least 100 plants, and preferably patches even larger than that. Regardless, follow these rules when you do decide to pick:

• Pick only the largest individuals. See the photo on the left above? There are a dozen little onions in that image, and only the largest one is worth picking.
• Stick and move. Pick that large one and move on. Look for another large one. By doing this, you will scatter your picking activity and leave the patch thinned, without large holes in it.
• Take only 10 to 20 percent of any given patch. And that 20 percent number is only really for private ground or ground you have a very good idea that no one else knows about. Think about it: If I collect 10 percent of an onion patch, then you come along and take 10 percent, then two other people come… well, we’ve screwed that patch, haven’t we?
• If you really need some wild onions, but the patch is pretty small, pick one large green leaf from each plant. That’s what I do with my Chinese garlic chives at home and they never appear to really notice it. It’s a good way to get that flavor you crave without digging up the whole plant.

Read the rest of Hank's post to get more suggestions on harvesting these wild bulbs, plus recipes for home use, including pickling!

Wild onion photos by Hank Shaw. Check out Hank's books here.

My First Pickle is an Onion

I cultivate friends with skills. Like Hank Shaw, master forager and inspiring hunter and cook, who showed me how to pluck wapato tubers from the marshy muck on a wetland's verge. Or Jack Czarnecki, mushroom guru extraordinaire, who revealed the mysteries of mycological activity occuring deep beneath the ground in Oregon's forests. Then there's Linda Colwell, who, among many other things, shared her passion for infused liqueurs made from seasonal berries and luscious syrups made from flowers. Not only do I learn new skills and work with (and enjoy) the freshest ingredients, I get to know fantastically smart and interesting people, a win-win-win!

Salted, rinsed onions.

One skill I've been jonesing to learn is pickling. (I know, right? It shocks me that I've never learned how.) No one in my family was into it when I was growing up, though I vaguely recall my mother tried pickling cucumbers a few times with apparently unsatisfactory results. So I was thrilled when my neighbor Bill, an amazing gardener and super nice guy, called and said that he and his equally cool wife, Jen, were going to make a batch of pickled onions from the Walla Walla sweet onions he'd harvested from his garden.

Onions going into jars.

Trying to walk, not run down to their house, I arrived with a jar of black currant jam in hand as payola to find that Jen had sliced the onions into half-inch rings and salted them down, then rinsed them thoroughly. They'd also made a brine of vinegar, sugar and some thyme leaves from their garden. While the onions were cooking in the brine, Jen pulled washed jars out of the dishwasher and put canning lids into a saucepan to simmer and sterilize.

Adding the brine.

Then it was just using tongs to pluck out the onions and fill the jars, pouring the still-hot brine over the onions and putting the lids on before they went into a hot water bath for ten minutes. Seriously, the whole process took a little over 90 minutes start to finish—along with the serious amount of time I spent wondering what in heck had prevented me from trying this simple process before. Thanks, guys!

Pickled Onions

For the brine:
3 1/2 c. white vinegar
2 c. sugar
1-2 tsp. thyme leaves plus sprigs for garnishing each jar

For the onions:
16 c. onions, sliced crosswise into 1/2" disks
4 Tbsp. pickling spice
10 1-cup canning jars and ten lids and rings

Wash ten one-cup jars in the dishwasher (or wash by hand in hot water). Allow to dry. Fill canner 2/3 full of water and bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cover.

Place onions and pickling spice into large mixing bowl and combine. Set aside for 1 hour, occasionally mixing them with your hands and separating them into rings. Rinse thoroughly to wash off any remaining pickling spice and squeeze gently to remove as much moisture as possible. Set in colander to drain.

While the onions are draining, put the vinegar, sugar and thyme leaves into a large pot and bring to a boil. Add the drained onions and when the brine returns to a boil, lower the heat slightly and cook the onions at a low boil for 10 minutes. While the onions are cooking, put the jars on a towel-lined tray. Put canning lids in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, then turn off heat.

Using tongs, put onions in each jar to within 1/2" of the rim (you won't necessarily use all the jars). Pour hot brine over the onions in the jars to within 1/2" of the rim. Top with sprig of thyme, if desired. With a clean towel, wipe the rims dry and place the canning lids on top, then screw on the canning rings finger-tight. Using canning lifter, submerge jars in the canner and bring water to a boil. When water in the canner returns to a boil, cook for 10 minutes. Using lifter, remove jars from canner and set on a towel on the counter to cool. Listen for the lids to pop, signifying a complete seal. They can be stored in a cool, dark place for from several months or up to a year.

In Season: Cipollini Onions

In a recent foray to a local farmers' market I ran across these cipollini (pron. chip-oh-LEE-nee) onions at the Winter Green Farm stand. Running just a buck each or three for $2.75, I'd never seen them fresh before, and my mind started racing with the possibilities. Grilling them whole with steaks seemed an honorable use, or slicing them into paper-thin rounds and placing them on crostini drizzled with olive oil or a blop of aioli might be a worthy way to savor them. Or if you have a better suggestion, do tell!