To peel or not to peel -- pearl onions?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This is far too mundane and trivial for GQ, plus, in MPSIMS I can wax poetic about the fine eats my SO and I like to enjoy.

My SO… erm, let’s call her Sniffs_Markers, and I like to make ourselves a fine meal, with fine wine at least once a week. This week it was coq-au-vin.

It was mahvelous, simply mahvelous. Never made it before, but Sniffs_Markers wanted to give it a go. (I stayed well out of the way this time. Next week it’ll be my turn for something fancy.)

Must you peel every stinkin’ little pearl onion? Or do the skins just get edibly mushy when you cook them? If you do have to peel 'em, is there an easy way? Sniffs_Markers did it the long way.

Poetic waxing:

Sunset and evening star

  • And coq-au-vin for me!*
    May our belt buckles be lossened
  • When we enjoy good eats*

But so much good food does put us to sleep,

  • Too full for e’en coffee,*
    Appetites thought our tummies boundless deep
  • O’erstuffed is me.*

[sub]With apologies to Tennyson[/sub]

2

When I first glanced at this thread title in the list, I thought it said “To pee or not to pee…”

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

I can’t wait to hear what you are going to call your kids…

3

I peeled mine when I used them for mini shish-ke-bobs, but you might not need to when cooking in a dish like coq-au-vin. An easy way to peel onions (Hah! an oxymoron):
Slice off the top and bottom
Make a slit from cut edge to cut edge, as in: cut from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic if it were the earth
Peel the outer layer off.

'course, for pearl onions you have to use a tiny knife. Where are those pesky elves when you need 'em?

4

For pearl onions, I believe the method is to drop them in boiling water for a minute; it should be possible to squirt them out of their skins after that. I still find it kind of a fussy job though.

5

Buy 'em as cocktail onions - they’re ready to go.

6

You can get 'em frozen and pre-peeled, too. I use the boiling for 1 minute, cool, and squirt 'em out of the skins method myself.

7

That sounds like a good idea. Sniffs_Markers was peeeling 'em as if they were big, Spanish onions. Lotsa frustration and swearing.

8

BUMP!

It worked! It worked!

We had friends over for diner and made coq-au-vin which required two baggies or those pearl onions.

Dropped the first batch into a boiling pot o’ water, fished 'em out – and… well, actually I didn’t boil the quite long enough, so no "squirting them out, but I could quickly yank off the outer peel in one fell swoop if I tore off the “roots.”

The second little batch I boiled a wee bit too long so when I fished 'em out (hot! hot! hot!) indeed all I need to do was give 'em a hard squeeze and they’d pop out from the inside. Since I boiled them a touch too long, the inside that squeezed out was kind of puny and I ended up “peeling” several layers more than I had intended, but I was in a rush and we didnt mind.

It worked! It worked! Yummy coq-au-vin for all! Manduck (and Theo too) we thank you, thank you, thank you! Saved us time and effort.

9

You’re very welcome. [weeping] It’s gratifying to know I’ve made a difference in someone’s life. :smiley: