Have you ever thought about what to do with onion skins after you've chopped up your onions for cooking? I confess I usually save mine to add to the pot when making bone broth.
Usually I'm saving onion skins just 1-2 at a time. Unless I happen to be dehydrating onions to use throughout the year. When that happens I suddenly have a lot of onion skins. So I was intrigued by the hot trend buzzing around on social media all about turning those seemingly useless onion skins into something amazing: onion powder!
According to the internet those papery layers you usually throw away are packed with nutrients like fiber, flavonoids, and antioxidants. That does make sense. There often tends to be some nutritional value to the peels of foods. But back to this onion powder craze.
Apparently, people are drying out their onion skins, grinding them up, and turning them into a flavorful powder that can be used for all kinds of dishes -- added to soups or stews, used for a marinade or rub, and more. All the enthusiasts rave about how powdering onion skins is so eco-friendly. Instead of tossing them into the trash, you're giving them a second life in your kitchen and reducing food waste. And it's so simple!
Being a can-do kind of person I decided to give this a try. And I confess I was a little disappointed in myself that I hadn't thought of it first. I began saving onion skins in the freezer until I had about 20 of them. Took them out of the freezer, let them thaw, patted off any residual moisture and began to grind them in a coffee grinder I have specifically for grinding not-coffee projects like this.
Warning: the results weren't great. Here's why I'll never do it again.
- It was slow going... there are only so many skins you can fit into the grinder at a time
- It takes repeated grinding (i.e. a loooooong time) to turn all the skins into powder
- The amount of powder is m-i-n-i-s-c-u-l-e by the time you've converted what looks fluffy and large into something you can sprinkle into food
- While it has the smell and taste of onion it's not nearly as strong as what you buy in the store
So as you can imagine I was less than thrilled when I looked at the teeny-weeny inch or so sitting in the bottom of the container after spending a significant amount of time overheating my trusty little not-for-coffee grinder.
This one goes into the don't-do-that-at-home category, along with my failed dehydrated bone broth experiment. I did this so you don't have to. I've decided it's totally worth it to buy onion powder. If for some reason the grocery store ran out and I absolutely had to have it I COULD make it. But I probably won't.
