Besides the traditional banh chung and banh tet (Southern region), pickled onions and pickled shallots are also popular as indispensable foods during the traditional Tet holiday of Vietnamese people across the country. My mother’s pickled onions are the most favorite dish for my family members, along with pickled shallots and pickled cabbage… That’s why she makes them every year.

In recent years, it is easy to find many types of food for Tet that are both delicious and beautiful, but my mother still likes to make it herself for the whole family. Seeing my mother work so hard, my brothers and I often tease her: "Why do you make it so tiring, Mom? Run to the market and buy a bunch of it." My mother laughs: "I make sure it is clean and delicious, I go to the market to buy it, it looks so beautiful, but I don't know how other people make it."

During Tet, eating rice with braised pork and eggs and pickled vegetables made by my mother is delicious. But what I hate the most is peeling onions. I don’t know why, but my mother peels them like me and is fine, while I have tears and a runny nose, as if someone has beaten me with a dozen canes. When I asked my mother, she joked: “I have a secret!”

Nowadays, when it comes to recipes, you can search online for hundreds of instructions in just 5 minutes, but it seems easy, but when you start making it, you will see how difficult it is. Depending on each person's own secret recipe for pickling, the pickled dish will have a different flavor. Mom's pickled onions are special in that they always retain their eye-catching purple color, when eaten, they will no longer have a spicy taste, but will have the aroma of onions, the sweet and sour taste, the lightness of lime and sugar mixed together, and even more special is the delicious crunchiness.

The ingredients used to pickle onions are often different depending on taste. Mom pickles onions with lime juice, a little sugar and salt. Mom said that lime juice has a slightly sour taste and gives the onions a beautiful color. According to Mom's experience, for every 1 kg of purple onions, use 1 kg of lime, about 500g of sugar (if you like a sweet taste, add more). The way to pickle onions is not too complicated: choose the even, firm onions, peel off the old outer skin, wash them and dry them, then mix them with the lime juice that has been seeded, add sugar and a little salt, mix well, put everything in a jar. Dry them in the sun for about 1 day, then put them in the refrigerator and they will have a beautiful color.

Whenever she has the chance, my mother often makes a lot of it and puts it in the refrigerator to use gradually. Thanks to my mother's pickled onions, the meals during Tet are less boring and more varied. Purple onions also have a laxative effect, promote blood circulation, are good for the spleen, prevent colds, are easy to digest, and detoxify... Therefore, pickled onions are not only used during holidays and Tet, but have also become a familiar daily dish on my family's menu./.

Khanh Huynh

Source: https://baocamau.vn/mon-dua-hanh-ngay-xuan-a2349.html