Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
At 79 cents a pound, we often take them for granted. They come in white, yellow, red, and even purple and grow profusely on every continent, even Antarctica (in greenhouses.) The onion is a staple of every cuisine and dates back to the first days of agriculture.
On late October afternoons, as the sun was setting in the west, and stadium lights were turned on to continue football practice, the aroma of frying onions drifted on the breeze. That wistful smell augmented the sound of whistles, popping pads, and fellow coaches yelling instructions.
You bet it made us hungry. The boys smelled it too. It’s a sensory memory on football fields in Lusk, Shoshoni, and Riverton that comes back to me when I catch the scent of someone frying onions in the early evening.
Much of my summer construction work was done miles from town, in rural settings, sometimes in locations so isolated that electricity wasn’t available. At other times, we built garages, decks and did remodels in the center of town.
One year, my dad and I built a house at Kinnear on the foundation of the old Lutheran Church. We worked each day until around 6 p.m. when we’d have to quit to change water back at the farm. Around 5:30, the smell of onions would waft from a nearby house onto the job site. It was cruel and unusual punishment for a carpenter to smell at the end of a 10-hour workday.
As a kid, I’d find wild onions growing on disturbed soil near irrigation ditches while setting canvases and moving water. Onions grew wild across the globe.
The modern onion we know originated in Iran or Pakistan. Onions vary in flavor, heat, and texture, but those thin-stemmed, grass-like onions growing along the irrigation ditch tasted the same as those from our garden or the store.
There are 70 varieties of wild onions in the continental United States. Many of them are found only in national parks or forests where they’re protected from harvest and herbicides.
European onions arrived in 1494 on Columbus’ second voyage to the Caribbean.
The onion is the second most cultivated vegetable on the planet. With a greater volume than every other crop aside from tomatoes.
As a world crop, it is only outproduced by field corn, wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, and beets. Not surprisingly, based on population, China is the largest producer, India second and the USA third. When it comes to aroma, onions, and their distant cousin, garlic are in a league of their own.
The Romans ate onions, along with other bulbs, including gladiola, lily, and hyacinth. Eating flowering bulbs has made a comeback in chic social settings, but it’s unlikely the trend will ever catch on.
What did catch on with onions was their supposed medicinal powers.
Mummies discovered in the Egyptian pyramids are often found with onions stuffed into their eye sockets. Egyptologists suspect it is the bacterial-killing nature of onions that the ancient embalmers knew of that led to onions for eyes.
In a more modern usage of onions, the Army of the Potomac in the American Civil War used hundreds of tons of onions when they were on the move in battle against the Confederacy, not just for flavoring food, but for medicinal uses as well.
At one point, the Army Surgeons reported to General Grant that they were out of onions. Grant telegraphed Washington, to inform the war department, and said his army wouldn’t move until they had sufficient onions to engage the enemy. Three wagon loads of onions arrived a couple of days later and his army moved into Virginia in pursuit of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.
Plant-based medicine, such as onions, is making a resurgence against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the white oak, flowers of tulip poplar, and the devil’s walking stick, are among the plants used by Civil War era physicians to kill bacteria. They remain a popular research topic at universities showing promise against especially hard-to-control bacterial infections.
Both Napoleon and Frederick the Great said, “An army marches on its stomach.”
They didn’t indicate onions as part of that famous statement, but they were there.
The chuck wagons feeding the cowhands on cattle drives from Texas to the rail heads in Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming carried hundreds of pounds of potatoes, they had almost as many onions. In an era devoid of the myriad spices available to us today, the onion, along with prodigious amounts of salt and black pepper were the seasons of choice, with maybe a handful of chili peppers thrown in for good measure.
The wild onions that started this gastronomic craze are no longer with us. The original wild onion that was first domesticated disappeared millennia ago.
Pliny the Elder, an author, naturalist, and philosopher living in the age of Christ wrote, “Cepea silvestesa no sun” almost 2,000 years ago. In English, his Latin phrase means “There are no wild onions.”
They were among the first plants to become extinct from human consumption, but they weren’t all eaten, they were taken to gardens and carefully cultivated. They became the onions of today in all their diverse varieties.
I tried growing the vaunted “Vidalia Onion” named after the town of Vidalia, Georgia one summer, but they weren’t the same as the trademarked bulb from the Peach State.
Vidalia onions are one of the most litigated vegetables on the planet. The Vidalia Onion Act of 1986, limits the name Vidalia, to just 20 counties in Georgia.
As it turns out, there is nothing special about the Vidalia onion, it is the same white onion you can buy at any market and grow in your garden with those same little net bags of onion sets at your local nursery.
What makes the Vidalia special is the low-sulfur soil it grows in. High sulfur means a stronger, more acidic taste, low sulfur produces a milder, sweeter flavor.
Unless you bring in soil from another region, you’re not going to reproduce the Vidalia in our high-sulfur environment.
The sour gas produced near Lysite, the foul-smelling water that is sometimes found around Fremont County, and the bubbling hot springs of Fort Washakie and Thermopolis are all indicators of the high levels of sulfur we experience living above the vast expanse of the Yellowstone caldera.
It’s not bad enough that we could all cease to exist in the explosive eruption of the caldera, but those bubbling pots of mud and erupting geysers in Yellowstone make our onions more pungent as well.
If you enjoy Mexican food, you’ll find onions. If you’re into Chinese cuisine, the onions are prepared differently, but they’re still there. India and Nepal, with their unique foods, are still dependent on onions, and if you’re into an All-American hamburger, nobody said it better than Jimmy Buffet in his hit, “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”
Cheeseburger in paradise
Heaven on Earth with an onion slice
Not too particular, not too precise
I’m just a cheeseburger in paradise
Our onions are about a foot high in our garden. Hopefully, by September they’re big enough to harvest.
Aside from taste, the onion lasts longer than any other vegetable through the winter.
Taste and longevity wrapped up in concentric circles, what more could you ask for?