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Worldwide Onion Quality Concerns?


Chris Amirault

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I was cooking this weekend quite a bit, and my wife overheard me cursing repeatedly. "Every other onion is a soft mess," I whined. "This has been happening all year long!"

My wife then responded by saying that she heard a story about onion quality dropping worldwide, especially in India. I haven't been able to find anything about this in my morning rush, so I turn to you.

Have your onions been lousy lately? Have others? What's going on? I need my alliums!!

Chris Amirault

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Nope, not just you. Grocery stores, farmers market, even whole foods, they are all suck. I've returned more than half of the bags I've bought in the last 2 months

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Chris Amirault

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Same here. I thought maybe they had been exposed to frost in transit. Guess not.

Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

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Could this problem be related to the fact that red onions are no longer as sweet/benign as they were a couple of years ago?

Darienne

 

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It's been my experience that red onions are more likely than yellow or white to be soft and beyond their prime even before I have purchased them. Lately, however, bagged yellow onions have been equally disappointing. My last onion purchase was a few days ago, and at that point, only the large, Spanish onions were worth buying. Strange, because these are often of the same mushy quality as the reds. This has been true across the board at all the markets I frequent, even Wegmans.

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Mitch, for me it's not seasonal. I've been careful about buying onions all year long, and even know which farms to buy from in the winter months (it's in Chelsea MA and has a distinctive tag on the red netting bag). And we're not talking about a small change: it's like going from a few bad onions per year to several entire bags being bad.

Having said that, does anyone have any information about this that transcends the anecdotal?

Chris Amirault

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I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the amount of rain received in onion growing parts of the country this year.

If there is a lot of rain before harvest, or more importantly during the curing stage, they're probably going to rot more quickly and more frequently. I don't believe this is anecdotal.

Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

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Red onions are the only ones I haven't been having an issue with. I got home with a sack of yellows the other day that only half were usable. I usually squeeze 2-3 through the bag to make sure and must have picked a bad sample set. I've also had more with the green mold growing.

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This article from The Packer talks about onions recoverng this year after last year's terrible onion weather, late freeze and poor onion quality. Because onions are in high demand in Mexico, the onions that normally would have been exported to us stayed there to cover the local demand left from a shortage of quality onions.

http://thepacker.com/Texas-onion-shippers-keep-eye-on-Mexico-s-crop/Article.aspx?oid=1309515&fid=PACKER-SPECIAL-SECTIONS&aid=654

I saw other articles that mentioned in passing the dry growth conditions and wet harvest conditions of 2010.

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I have stopped buying bags of onions (and potatoes) long ago. Typically about a quarter of them are mushy or moldy. I only buy loose onions that I can give a close look at each one. i also carry a good pocket knife and will cut open a sample piece (especially fruits) to see if they are acceptable. I pay more but have less waste. If you go the the market early in the morning you may see the clerks tossing the stuff that has gone bad overnight. I often see them putting the new stuff under the old so it is a good idea to dig deep for the freshest produce.

Paul Eggermann

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I have stopped buying bags of onions (and potatoes) long ago. Typically about a quarter of them are mushy or moldy. I only buy loose onions that I can give a close look at each one. i also carry a good pocket knife and will cut open a sample piece (especially fruits) to see if they are acceptable. I pay more but have less waste. If you go the the market early in the morning you may see the clerks tossing the stuff that has gone bad overnight. I often see them putting the new stuff under the old so it is a good idea to dig deep for the freshest produce.

All great tips, Paul. Do you cut into every onion you buy? That's been part of the problem for me: my otherwise trusty onion-quality senses, which have been just fine for a few decades, fail me now.

Chris Amirault

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I use mostly yellow onions and have been very disappointed lately. I thought my local supermarket was once again cheaping out and buying low quality onions rather than paying the extra two cents to get good quality produce. Guess I was wrong.

The only onion shopping criterion I know of is to select the cleanest, hardest, most perfect looking onions I can find and reject all others. Even then, I have lately brought home too many marginal onions and a couple of real stinkers.

I stopped buying bagged anything - other than those veggies where bagged is the only choice. My market loves to use bulk size bags to get rid of their second quality items.

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In reading on the internet about onion quality, packing sites talked about cured and uncured (fresh) garlic and onions. Anyone know what they do to cure an onion?

Also, I've always heard that if you store onions and potatoes together they will both go bad.

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Quality problems in California as well. Out of a 3 pound bag of yellows I bought a couple weeks back, I got exactly one I could use in its entirety, and two where I could only salvage half of each. And like all y'all, I thought it was just me.

For me, sweets, reds and whites tend to go bad, or be bad to start with, more frequently than the yellows.

--Roberta--

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This article from The Packer talks about onions recoverng this year after last year's terrible onion weather, late freeze and poor onion quality. Because onions are in high demand in Mexico, the onions that normally would have been exported to us stayed there to cover the local demand left from a shortage of quality onions.

http://thepacker.com/Texas-onion-shippers-keep-eye-on-Mexico-s-crop/Article.aspx?oid=1309515&fid=PACKER-SPECIAL-SECTIONS&aid=654

I saw other articles that mentioned in passing the dry growth conditions and wet harvest conditions of 2010.

This article explains the poor quality of onions last year, especially on the East Coast (as I read this board).

Regular onions everywhere are scuzzy now because it's the end of that season. Those are the last onions coming out of storage. Fresh spring onions have been in the market here for weeks, and I expect the new crop of regular onions to show up in the market soon.

The quality of onions here has been fine, except for the last month or two, which is normal for us. California, Oregon, & Idaho all grow large crops of onions. As far as I know, those crops had no problems.

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