What Is Your Favorite Allium Crop?

Allium is the Latin word for garlic, but includes different plants in addition to garlic, like onions, shallots, leeks, etc.  I like them all!  Don't know if I can pick out a favorite.  They all add a layer of flavor to anything you cook, and the fragrance of any of them cooking down in a skillet is enough to make your mouth water.  

I think I had mentioned it before, but onions are spoken of in the Bible.  In Numbers 11:15 the Israelites were complaining in the wilderness after gaining their freedom:

"We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic"

Onions and garlic are delicious, to be sure, but I think I value my freedom more than that!  Back in early January, we planted our onions in this post: Post on Planting Onions  Now, it is time to harvest!  You can tell they are ready when the leaves bend over like the one in the very center of the photo below:

Without hardly any effort, the ripened onion pulls right up out of the ground.

They ripen at different times.  I pull them as they bend over and then lay them in the sun for a day on their sides.

I'll then bring them on the back patio for curing.  Here is a nice Texas 1015 Sweet Yellow Onion:

There's a nice white onion.  On the rack behind, you can see some Creole Onions.  I like them all.

This is my original setup.  I snip the green leaves off the onion after a couple days of drying and then set them upside down on baker's racks with a fan positioned underneath. I've had trouble in the past in which on days of high humidity (almost every day in the summer), the onions would get soft and go bad.  Keeping airflow on them on days of dry weather helps to mitigate that.

Yesterday, however, a kind gentleman from our church brought by this drying table he made for me.  It is lined with hardware cloth to allow airflow all around.  

I positioned two box fans underneath to blow air upward and through the drying table.

This table is certainly a blessing!

We have been eating onions with fresh squash and onions with cucumbers.  We plant on eating French Onion soup and we will try other dishes featuring onions since we had a bumper crop of them.  The best onion harvest we've ever had!  Homemade onion rings are a favorite of mine.  I'll see if we can get that on the menu soon.  I tip my hat to Dixondale Farms in Carrizo Springs, Texas for running a great operation and introducing me to planting onions.