Here at City Folk Homestead, I am learning how to cook at home and from scratch while also balancing homemaking, homeschooling, and homesteading. I bring you all along with me as I have trials and errors and also as I find awesome hacks to making my homesteading dreams happen (and maybe yours too!). This food prep hack makes my meal preparation so much easier and I can’t be a gatekeeper any longer. Let me show you these easy ways to prepare one of the most nutrition-packed vegetables for easy meal prep no matter how busy your week. By freezing onions, whether diced or minced as onion pucks, you can create expedited simple steps in your meal preparation that will save you time!
Benefits of onions
If you are still new to homesteading and/or cooking from scratch, then you may not understand my excitement over a seemingly commonplace vegetable. But have you ever looked into the health benefits of onions? I recently wrote a guest post over at Off Grid World and dug into why onions were such a big deal in the homesteading community. What I found blew me away!
Yellow onions are hands-down the most nutritious, though raw onions of any variety hold quite a few special powers! Yellow onions contain the most quercetin, which is said to be a superfood antioxidant according to Dr. Axe. Red onions are also high in antioxidants and flavonoids that can be cancer-preventing and immune-boosting. All onions contain antioxidants that can boost immunity, improve heart health, and provide protection against respiratory illnesses and arthritis.
Do you get the hint? I’m not trying to be subtle here. You need onions for a healing and healthy diet. If you grow your own onions, then you know that they do have a longer shelf life than other vegetables, up to three or more months when stored properly. But if you are wanting to store them for delicious recipes for later use months down the line, then you will need to dehydrate or freeze them for best results.
Food prep benefits to freezing onions
By prepping multiple pounds of onions at one time, I am able to spill my tears, make my house’s natural aroma reek of that notable onion smell, and take back some time in my kitchen during my busy days in one fell swoop. By having smaller bags of minced onion pucks and diced onions in my main freezer upstairs, with larger gallon-sized bags in my overflow freezer, I take the first step in creating healthy, nutritious meals for my family at home without much effort.
The extra step of purchasing onions in bulk and spending an afternoon prepping them is so worth the long-term benefit I get each time I pull these pre-packaged items out of my freezer. The great thing about this food prep hack is that it really doesn’t take me much time, either, because the food processor/blender does most of the work!
The easy way to preserve onions in your freezer
My post over at Off Grid World was about preserving onions through dehydration (and also making a delicious and flavor-packed homemade onion powder). But what if you don’t want to go through the trouble of dehydrating onions at all? Well, I want to share with you my favorite way to preserve a lot of onions and wisely meal prep. By making minced onion pucks and freezing them for future use, you use your tears up all in one big batch and save a ton of time throughout the week creating a nutritional meal for your family to enjoy.
The reason I love these frozen minced onion pucks is because I have some extended family members who like the taste of onion but prefer not to eat them in dices. Introducing: the best solution ever! My family members can still get a made-by-Paige-from-scratch meal without sacrificing the flavor or health benefits. I can also spend less time preparing our meal by pulling a couple of these out of the freezer and plopping them into the dish to thaw. Rather than standing over the kitchen counter with tears running down my cheeks as I try to dice an onion before sautéing, I can speed up my meal prep tremendously with these convenient pucks.
I first tried this method with garlic and loved it so much I decided to try with onions. Let me tell you – it is absolutely worth it! This was also a great way to wisely use my time by only using the best slices (shape and size) for the dehydrated onions and throw the rest in my blender with some olive oil to make these extremely convenient minced onion pucks.
The best way to freeze lots of onions step-by-step
First, add your roughly sliced onions into the blender. They do not need to be pretty, just small enough to fit in the cup. Then, add a little bit of olive oil. This step isn’t totally necessary, but I like to add it to ensure the pucks stick together. Not too much, maybe a tablespoon or two depending on how big your blender is, otherwise they will be too runny as onions hold a lot of moisture already.
The next step is to blend the onions until they are minced to your preference. This does not take long at all. Just a few seconds and voila!
Then, scoop out using a tablespoon or cookie scoop onto a clean cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. I love using my extra large baking sheets for this project as they fit perfectly in my second fridge’s freezer compartment and my deep freeze. This allows me to get multiple batches done at the same time.
Throw that into your freezer to flash freeze and then store in a freezer bag or glass container. I use these frozen onion pucks with almost every lunch and dinner, so they do not last long in this house. If you are still learning to cook at home or do not use onion as frequently as I do, I may suggest double bagging them in freezer bags for longer term storage.
When you are ready to use your minced onion pucks, simply pull one or two out and add to your dish. I have used these in lieu of diced onions or onion powder in soups, when baking chicken in the oven, and when cooking ground beef on the stovetop for homemade spaghetti sauce. Anything you would use onion for, this is a great alternative to dehydrating or frozen, diced onions.
I especially like to pull these out for the flavor when our family comes in town and swears they don’t like fresh onions (or when the kids decide to be picky for the day). You get the flavor without the chunks and therefore no one ever knows!
When preparing my minced onion pucks, I will buy a ten pound bag or two of onions from our bulk store. Then I will throw most of them in the blender to quickly make these aromatic drops of goodness rather speedily. But I generally won’t use all of the onions solely for this purpose. Sometimes, our family really enjoys biting into a little dice of onion, particularly when I’m making tacos or meatloaf. In this case, I will pull out another bag full of my quick meal prep hacks: the frozen, diced onion.
While I’m already ruining all of my makeup (if I’m even ambitious enough to put it on that morning), I might as well get it all out of the way and dice up some onions too. The onion tears and onion odor can be contained within just a couple of hours of prep time, as opposed to dicing up a fresh onion whenever a recipe calls for it. Frozen diced onions are perfect for when you want added texture to your dish.
Freezing onions in a small or medium dice
I don’t even worry about freezing in a single layer. As long as the onions are cut in a small dice, they will easily break apart when adding to a dish. I am also not the kind of gal that measures with anything other than her heart when she cooks. I do try my best to get accurate measurements for recipes that I share on this blog. But most of the time, in my own kitchen, my meals are like a box of chocolates. Even those that are “tried and true” will be different every time I make it.
I choose to freeze my large onions in dices rather than slices or as whole onions because it is a huge time saver for me as this is what we eat the most. If you are a sucker for carmelized onions, then consider leaving your onion whole or slice onions to your preference before freezing in a thicker freezer bag to prevent freezer burn (especially if you don’t use these cuts of onion frequently). In my kitchen, I prefer the ease of use of dumping the frozen pieces of onion straight into my dish, particularly because I use onions multiple times a week for different meals.
Uses for frozen diced onions
Now, while storing onions in smaller pieces in the freezer is an excellent way to food prep during busy weeknights, it does slightly change the texture of the onion, Therefore, I would not recommend using these onions in raw dishes. Though I have a large stash of onions in my freezer in either the pucks or dices, I still purchase onions on a regular basis and almost always have fresh, raw onion on hand.
The main reasons I like to keep a bag of onions for freezer cooking are for ease of use and specific dishes just taste better with a textured bite of onion as opposed to simply the onion flavor.
Dinner prep has been made so easy for me by keeping a bag of frozen onions in my freezer. Although it does take up storage space in our freezer, it is absolutely worth it because it saves me so much time during meal prep.
I also enjoy using these frozen diced onions whenever I am browning ground beef for Mexican-style dishes as it adds the texture, variety, and flavor profile I am looking for without adding a bunch of different seasonings. They are also great to throw into spaghetti sauce and smoothed with an immersion blender if you don’t have any minced onion pucks on hand. Or perhaps your preference is to have a chunkier sauce and in that case, these work great for that too!
I do find myself personally using the frozen onion pucks more than the frozen diced onions, but that is our household preference. Diced onion is extremely popular in many dishes and therefore you can’t go wrong having frozen diced onions already prepped in your freezer.
Decreasing food waste in your kitchen
Instead of throwing those onion peels away or simply giving them to your compost pile, I suggest also throwing these into your freezer! Whenever it is convenient for you, take out these onion peels and other vegetable scraps (such as carrots, celery, and potato skins) and make a delicious and beautiful amber-colored vegetable broth!
These papery outer skins add a delicious flavor, aroma, and amber color to your vegetable broth. Not only is it a healthy substitute for water in most dishes, but it is also just really pretty sitting on the pantry shelf.
I like to use vegetable broth when cooking rice or mashed potatoes in lieu of water as well as the base for most soups and chilis. I tend to have more vegetable broth on hand than other broths (such as chicken, beef, or turkey). This is because we go through so many potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and celery in our house as I cook from scratch more often.
I do not season any of my broths as I prefer to add salt and pepper to taste in the finished dish. I also keep the vegetables used in the broth rather basic because that is what is most versatile and most used in my kitchen. The star of the show, however, truly is the onion in flavor and color. I am always proud of my finished product when my vegetable broth is made with lots of the papery outside layer of an onion.
Tips to the wise
Storing onions in plastic wrap is not the best practice as a whole. The reason for this is two-fold. For one, plastic bags and plastic wrap do not provide adequate ventilation. This means that onions can mildew quickly, exponentially decreasing the onions’ shelf-life. The other primary reason is that onions quickly and easily absorb whatever is around them. Have you ever heard of putting onions in your socks when you’re sick? The reason for this suggestion is that it is said the onions can pull out the toxins in your body overnight. Same concept applies when they’re stored in plastic bags that can leach chemicals. Therefore, I will only store raw onions in the fridge in airtight containers made from glass. I do concede however that most of my freezer storage (for now) is in plastic freezer bags. While I do want to claim the label as “crunchy,” I’m just not there yet.
We are city folk at heart. Before moving to the homestead two years ago, I did not care about BPA or plastic leaching into my food and I wasn’t even aware of the harm that processed foods and additives did to the human body. Overhauling our entire lifestyle and changing our mindset has been one investment after another, either of time or of financial resources. Sometimes we just have to do with what we have. And for now, I have the ability to provide cooked at home/made from scratch meals for my family a majority of the time. I didn’t have that capability two years ago.
So yes, I am conceding on a Ziploc bag because I know the health benefit to my family that I am providing through the types of food we eat is much greater than it used to be. Eventually I want to get there. Eventually I want the all-glass or wood kitchen utensils and plates and all of the crunchy things. But for now, I am thankful to be this far along in our natural living journey. I am choosing to be encouraged by our progress. I refuse to be discouraged by where I still want to go.
How about you? What are some simple steps toward homesteading/natural living progress that you would like to celebrate? Share with me in the comments below or tag me on Instagram @cityfolkhomestead and let’s celebrate together!
More from the City Folk Homestead kitchen
Make ahead freezer-friendly breakfast burrito recipe
How to preserve corn for the first time
Moist fifth generation pumpkin bread recipe (made with coconut oil!)
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