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Finished product - shelf stable green onions

Preserving Green Onions

No matter how we try to use up green onions from the garden, we always end up either with too many in the fridge or overgrown, leek-sized onions taking up space in the garden. This week we did something about it.

Now that the days are longer, we hauled out our trusty solar food dryer to put it to work for the season. In addition to making delicious flax chips again, we’ve christened the solar dryer this year with our green onion harvest.

Freshly sliced green onions
Freshly sliced green onions

How-to:

1) Chop or slice green onions into thin rounds after washing and patting dry. Keep sizes uniform and (lesson learned) separate thicker white parts from thinner green parts. They require different drying times, so isolation is a good practice here.

2) Spread the slices out on screens in a single layer. Keep some space between each piece.

3) Dry away. That’s basically it!

2 layers of green onions drying out
2 layers of green onions drying out

Our solar food dryer has 2 shelves, and most electric dehydrators have 5-9. Just make sure there is enough space between to allow air flow.

Green Onions drying in the solar food dryer
Green Onions drying in the solar food dryer

Notes: about half way through drying time (the halfway point in this case was about 7 hours) rotate trays. You’ll also see that we didn’t separate whites from greens, a mistake we won’t make again. The whites were still soft after many of the greens were dry and brittle.

Green onions almost dried out
Green onions almost dried out

In the end we left our dried onions out on the counter overnight to let them finish drying completely and acclimate to indoor humidity. Now they are ready for storage in a mason jar in the pantry.

Finished product - shelf stable green onions
Finished product – shelf stable green onions

Uses for dried green onions? Throw into soups and stews, use in marinades, crumble and sprinkle into scrambled eggs. The possibilities are endless!

Do you have a favorite way to use green onions, fresh or dried? Share your ideas here.

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Julea

    Thank you. I needed to know if i could just put them in a jar dried. Now i know. 🙂

  2. Kim

    Just wanted to thank u forhavingthe info I needed…

  3. Marie

    Can I just dry the onions in the oven?

  4. Bibi

    Where did you get your solar dryer? What’s the best-value one? Or, is it easy and cheap to build your own? Thanks for the advice.

    1. Christy

      Hi Bibi, Solar food dryers are generally homemade, as was ours. You can find info on how we built ours in Gardening for Geeks and on this blog post: https://gardenerd.com/building-a-solar-food-dryer/

      You’ll find details about how much we spent compared to how much conventional dehydrators cost. You can also order a kit from SunWorks, which makes it a lot easier to make your own.

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