Pickled Onions

It always amazes me how much fun little one has with simple things like a big bowl of onions. A lot of recipes he can't help with the final hot cooking phase but it doesn't stop him getting in on the pre-cooking bit! I was making jars of these as Christmas presents and I ended up having to get a whole new batch of onions as he wanted to play with the first lot.

Ingredients
Lots of pickling onions (these are dirt cheap from any greengrocer or you can use shallots)
Large batch of malt vinegar
Pickling spices. (these vary, I used mustard seeds and black pepper corns and coriander seeds. You can use them separately or buy them in bags from shops. The mix will vary but be brave!)
Dried chilli (you can either put the dried chilli straight in the jar or if you don't have any then get some cayenne pepper or even a few shakes of piri piri spices/cajan spices or whatever you happen to have.)

Method
Give little one and mini man a big pile of onions and several jars. They spent ages putting them in and taking them out of the jars until little man finally decided they would be much better off in the dolls house. Makes perfect sense when you think about it.

Soak the onions for an hour in cold water, top and tail them and peel off the skins. The next bit is grown up only. Put the jars on newspaper in the oven and bake until very hot. Boil the lids in hot water. Take everything out and fill up with onions, add spices and vinegar to the top of the jar. Seal with the lids and leave to cool.

These make excellent economical presents and you can let the little ones decorate the jars with nice labels, pretty fabric lids and ribbon or even get them to paint the jars.