I hate to waste food, so I scratched my head as to what to do with them.
I have been reading a lot of Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions lately. The book gave me a great idea: make some pickled pearl onions and preserve the onions for much longer than they will continue to last in my fridge.
The recipe I used out of Nourishing Traditions does not use vinegar to pickle the onions, but lacto fermentation. It is an artisan craft that does not lend itself to industrialization. In the good old days, people preserved their vegetables with lacto fermentation since they did not have canning machines or freezers. Lactic acid is a natural preservative that inhibits putrefying bacteria. Lacto fermentation is easy and health-giving as it imparts important enzymes into the body.
So, without further ado, this is the recipe I used:
1 # pearl onions
1/2 cinnamon stick
pinch of nutmeg
1 tsp whole cloves
1/2 tsp peppercorns
pinch tarragon
1 tsp sea salt
4 Tbsp whey
1 -2 cups filtered water (to fill the jar to 1 inch below the top)
Loosen the skin on onions by plunging them into boiling water for 10 seconds. Remove, peel and place them in a quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jar. Combine remaining ingredients and pout mixture over the onions, adding more water if necessary to cover them. The top of the liquid should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for 3 days before moving to cold storage.
(Tip: You can easily make your own whey and cream cheese by purchasing a high quality yogurt (with the only ingredient being milk) and placing it in a cheese cloth suspended over a bowl. Leave for several hours until the dripping from the cheese cloth stops completely. The liquid in the bowl is your whey, the solids in the cheese cloth are your home-made cream cheese. Store the whey in the fridge in a glass jar. It will last up to 6 months!)