Recently my local grocery store had onions on sale. I use onions ALL the time! So I bought about 12 pounds of onions. By the time I got to prepping them for the freezer we had already used some so I had about 10lbs of onions that I could put up in the freezer. This is a GREAT time saver when I am throwing together dinner or even an unexpected dish that needs to be cooking as soon as possible!! (That actually happened last weekend and I was SO happy to not have to chop onions!)
So this is how I do it. For starters, I pick a time, when there is TIME to get the job done, start to finish. Second, if possible, I enlist help. This last time it was the 2 kids, who were NOT thrilled but ended up being real troopers and pretty amusing in the process. Then I set up my equipment. Knives, bowls (1 for garbage, one for parts I save for using in stock and one or more for the chopped onion), cutting boards and my chopper.
Some people use onion goggles to keep from crying when cutting onions. I don't have any and besides I wear glasses. So if I wore onion goggles I wouldn't be able to see anything anyway, lol. So needless to say as soon as we start this job we start crying. I can handle it, but these kids.....lol. They got a fan, opened the door, opened the kitchen window, turned on the exhaust fan over the oven and needed to take frequent breaks going to the door. It was pretty comical. Them calling out to one another letting each other know when the other had some of their "job" waiting for them. We all had a good laugh for sure!!!
I make my own smaller vac-seal bags by cutting a large one in half and making sure it is sealed on the 3 sides before filling.
I fill, vac-seal, label with a sharpie then freeze.
Money saving & time saving. I also do this with bell peppers as well. I just pop the pack into the microwave if I am in a super big hurry. 30 seconds softens the package enough to pop them out into the pan.
Here is wishing you tear free onion chopping! And lots of sale prices at stores near you ;) Happy cooking!
