Sweet return How to keep and cook first-of-the-season Vidalia onions
By Virginia Willis Southern Kitchen
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ou might be a Southerner if you associate panty hose with onions. And, no, it’s not weird or kinky. Pretty much any Southerner worth their salt knows that the best way to store a springtime crop of Vidalia onions is to tie them up in a long, knotted train of sheer tights and hang them in a cool, dry place as long as they’ll last. The Vidalia onion harvest is typically from late April through mid-June. In this age of season-less grocery stores where both strawberries and winter squash are always available, there’s something perfectly wonderful about that tradition of grabbing the onions at their peak. Seasonality aside — why are these onions so special? Unlike a typical yellow or white onion, they don’t have that pungent bite and they’re shaped more squatty than round. To be considered a true Vidalia, an onion has to be grown from a specific Yellow Granex hybrid in a 20-county area in southeast Georgia surrounding the town of Vidalia, where there is a naturally low level of sulfur in the soil. Sulfur is what gives alliums like onion and garlic their distinctive bite — so it makes sense that if there’s not much sulfur in the soil, there won’t be much sulfur in the onion. In addition, the sandy soil and temperate weather of the coastal plain create
VIRGINIA WILLIS
8 | SOUTHERN KITCHEN
