[DanielCoffey]

Hi folks - I need some urgent advice on how (or if) I can save some onions that have got frozen in unheated storage.

The situation is that I have about 10 kilos of properly dried loose onions in an unheated and detached garage. Being in Southwest Scotland we have had over a week below zero and the nighttime temperatures have dropped as low as -7.5C with it not rising above freezing all day. I know everything in the garage is frozen as bottles of car cleaning products are solid.

I don't need to know how to prevent freezing in the future but I do need to know if these onions are a write off, whether they are going to be fine or if I should bring them in and try to preserve as many as possible by cooking, drying or re-freezing in bags.

We will have two more days of completely below freezing temperatures before we are forecast a thaw.

Thoughts please?

[DanielCoffey]

Drat! They are frozen solid so have to be used right away. I brought a small and large one indoors and they went soft when thawed.

Looks like a third of them to be used in Sweet Onion Relish with Caraway and as many of the rest as I can stand being cooked slowly in balsamic vinegar then put into the Dehydrator for use in soups.

[snowdrops]

Sounds good what you have already done, what about fried onions then frozen in portion size packs? Or would they dehydrate then?

[DanielCoffey]

I am limited in freezer space so I will put them through the dehydrator.

I have been warned that raw onions can be pungent when dried and that the odour can be persistent on the non-stick sheets of the Excalibur as well as any blenders that you use if making dried onion powder. Baking parchment mitigates that on the dehydrator.

When frying them and drying the tip was to use the minimum amount of oil then add balsamic (or a mix of cider vinegar and brown sugar 6:1) as needed to keep them moist while slowly frying till well cooked.

It is a shame I have lost the onions as they were Roscoff PDO onions from France. They were just for soups and stews though so drying them is an alternative to garage storage.