I want to fry up some onions and store them for use in later dishes. This will prevent the partially-used onion from drying out and being thrown away, and prevent me from using too many onions just to get rid of it.
Is there anything I should know? Will they go bad? Lose their flavor?
Do you mean sauteed onions? Or battered-n-deep-fried, as in onion rings?
If you mean the former, it works fine. Saute to the desired degree of doneness, pop into a container, seal, and refrigerate. I don’t know the official line on how long they’ll keep, but a week would be my minimum guess.
Other options: Cook and freeze (preferably in portions suitable for whatever recipe you’d use them in) OR chop/slice, blanch, and freeze, just like you would any other vegetable.
sauteed onions
I do that all the time. I sautee up a big mess of vidalia onions and red peppers in olive oil and garlic, then during the week if I’m making some eggplant or zucchini or spinach I’ll just throw some of the pepper and onion mixture in. The flavor is just as good as when new, maybe better. Cover and store in the refrigerator. I make a new batch once a week or so, but it never lasts until the end.
With something like onions, I don’t think this can be stressed enough: use an air-tight container in the refrigerator.
you can just chop them and freeze them. Works great, I’ve got 4 mason jars full in my freezer right now. Makes it easy to pull out just a handful at a time.
Don’t frozen onions get really mushy? I used to freeze chicken bones and veggie scraps for stock and the onions had always turned to bleah. Or do you use them in dishes where texture is irrelevant?
OP: I’ve frozen pre-sauteed onions before - works great! My favorite use was for a quick hot dog lunch, because I lovelovelove onions on a hot dog but the chopping and browning defeats the purpose of having a quick’n’easy snack out of the microwave.
I froze them in flattened sandwich baggies, so you can just break off a piece to use. I really found myself enjoying having browned onions in places where it would normally be too much time/trouble to go the one extra step otherwise and would simply do without.
Depending on how much you need at a time, couldn’t you cook them and stick blobs into an ice cube tray to freeze, then put them into a freezer bag to store? People do this with homemade baby food. Or plop them on a cookie sheet to freeze, then into the bag, same idea. You have individual amounts, but they can all be stored in the same bag.
I’ve kept chopped raw onions in the freezer, and then used them for sauteeing or cooking somehow. As long as you’re cooking them, it doesn’t matter if they’ve been frozen, IMO, at least.
If you need them to be lightly sauteed, and still crisp, fresh is always better.