We offer several members of the allium family in our boxes including spring onions, scallions, purplette onions, leeks and green garlic.
Spring onions
About Scallions, by Chef Andrew
A lot of people think scallions, a.k.a. green onions, can be substituted for shallots, or even garlic, but that just won’t work. Scallions have a flavor all their own, fresh and bright with very little of the pungency of the rest of the alliums, making them ideal for raw preparations such as salads. When it comes to prepping them, use a sharp knife or a pair of scissors to trim the roots from them, and then roll them in toweling and store in a plastic bag in a cool part of the refrigerator. Moisture will start the greens decaying, and if the bag is left open the greens will wilt. If you wish, you can do as some restaurants do; slice the whites and place in a paper towel lined box, and then slice the whites thinly and run under cold water in a fine mesh strainer. If you feel the greens, you may notice they feel slippery. Rinse until that feeling has gone away, then dry them on towels. When dry, you can store them with or separated from the whites. As the whites can be cooked more readily than the greens, I usually keep them separate. The advantage to this method is that it saves time later, and the cut onions, once dried well and stored airtight, is that they will last several days. If you are diligent in your drying, they can last a week. This makes it easy to pull some out to scatter on a dish at the last moment, or if you are in a hurry and need onions for a sauté it saves you the time and tears it would take to cut some. When getting ready to cut scallions, be sure you are using a good sharp knife. After trimming the rootlets, if you peel off the outside layer of the scallion, use a towel to wipe away the thin transparent skin that is usually present between layers of onion. Band the onions with a rubber band so they are snug together, but not so tight that the rubber band crushes the scallions.
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