The Most Eccentric Way To Store Onions Just Might Be The Best

Is there a sadder sight in produce than the squandered potential of a raw onion gone soggy? Cry for the right reasons with proper food storage. The rules are simple: Keep raw onions away from potatoes and apples. Standard onion know-how also suggests parking the little flavor bombs in a cool, dry, well-ventilated area, but not a refrigerator, considered simultaneously too cool and somewhat humid.

If the root of an onion storage problem — and the subsequent soupy mess of an onion gone bad — turns out to be insufficient cellar or counter space, a crafty solution could save the day.

Enter the mighty pantyhose, known variously as nylons or stockings. That indispensable outfit essential for gendered corporate office life and grunge-femmes alike might mean a leg-up for onion longevity. In business professional attire, your aromatic tear-jerker of a root vegetable may remain fresh for around six months. Just make sure to abide by the dark and cool stricture on your onion treasury for the longest-lasting, crispest onions.

Cut onions will last for a much shorter period of time, but in that case, you would not store them in a pantyhose garland to festoon the kitchen with anyway. Use the pantyhose trick only for whole onions and banish the mucky mess of yesterday's rotten onions forever.

Pantyhose have the distinction of being soft, so they won't damage your produce. They're sheer, so they allow onions to breathe. And they're often inexpensive, so you might spend around the cost of an onion to store many more than one pungent red, white, or yellow bulb.

People who have done time in pantyhose know how easily a snag turns into a run, and a run can ruin the whole pair — depending on your personal style. This is to say that you may know someone inclined towards only neat hosiery with a pair to toss. In that case, recycling and reusing could make this whole operation an environmentally sound experiment to boot.

For a yield of two ready-to-use onion sleeves, wash one pair of pantyhose, dry them, and then lop off the part above the thigh. Next, drop whole, dry onions in towards the footie. Leave the tunics, or the papery outer onion layers, as is.

Onion-in-hose enthusiasts suggest tying the hosiery in a little knot after each orb to keep it separate from the next. This is not so much to give the onion physical space as to save time when the hose is ripped open, and the bag must inevitably be retied anyway. Secure your onions to any peg or hook in a dark place on the wall, or let them rest somewhere where air can flow.

When you're ready to make some peanut butter-stuffed onions, simply use shears to snip your onion free from its pocket as the rest remain held safely aloft in a pantyhose pouch for vegetables. Voila! Now for your next challenge: learning how to chop an onion without crying. Until then, enjoy happy, firm onions for months to come.