I love growing fresh herbs and veggies in my garden. The fresh scent of lavender wafts through the air as I cut tips off to start new sprouts with. The minty scents of my various mint species that tickle my nose as I water their pots thoroughly. The strong scent of what I lovingly labeled as an emotional herb, the green onion, as I cut the stalks to be used in soups, omelets, pizzas, whatever. It is the only plant that brings a tear to my eye...hence my nickname: the emotional plant!
My favorite use for them is in ramen soup. You can REALLY make your ramen into something more substantial than just noodles and flavored water...and actually, what is sold in the local grocery store is just the base for you to build up on with a couple of fresh veggies of your choice, salt, pepper, meat cubes of your choice......even diced hot dogs or Spam, and an egg to turn it into a real gourmet meal!
But, this is not about ramen... it's about the wonderful and versatile green onion!
Last week, the day after our Thanksgiving feast, I noticed my newly planted green onions were growing a bit too long, so I chopped a few off to be dehydrated. These new stalks had been purchased from my local grocery store and were immediately planted in a window container (not currently in a window).
Notice, I don't cut all of the way down. This stem was actually longer, but, as usual, I had forgotten to take a pic, so this was taken after the fact!
The next thing I did was wash them thoroughly, checking for any areas that might have been chewed on by small insects. I usually wash gently and run each stalk between my fingers until they sort of squeek.
Now, this step is REALLY important if you want your dehydrating done right.
Completely dry your produce. I didn't do that with one batch and it turned out like this:
Unappetizing!!
So, make sure you dry each stalk before moving on to the next step.
Another mistake I made, as you can see from the pic: I did not cut them.
I figured I would just grind them later, but, it did not happen that way.
I have these awesome chopping shears specifically for the slicing part; HOWEVER, this is best when you want fresh onions in your soup. It did not serve my purpose for dehydrating them, because the blades are too close together and basically tore up the onions. So, either slice your onion stalks with the oldie but trusty kitchen knife, or, you can use plain single blade scissors, like I do.
I cut mine over the tray, which is why they look so lovely and evenly spaced here!! YAY!! A WIN!!
These two pics are from my "pulverized by shears" batch which did dehydrate perfectly, but was harder to work with since they stuck to the tray. I only included these pics to show how I stacked my trays. I only used the top tray since I had just enough onions for one tray.
After I turned the dehydrator on, I set my timer to roughly 30-35 minutes so I wouldn't overdo the drying process.
This is the end result of my method of dehydration. WAY more pleasing to the eye!!
You can either go ahead and store them in a spice container, or, at this point, put them in a ziplock bag for crushing the herb. Smash, squeeze, or crumple them...whatever method you like best. I did all three until the majority was broken up in bits, but, not ground to a powder!
Carefully pour into your spice jar (I repurpose nearly EVERY container that comes into my house!! Even powdered coffee creamer containers)! And there you have it: dehydrated groom onion stalks for your next tasty meal!
Happy Dehydrating!!
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