Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
which look like extremely fine green onions but are actually a separate species (Allium
schoenoprasum). And garlic chives, which are still another species (Allium tuberosum).
And that's not even addressing leeks (Allium ampeloprasum), which we'll get to later.
A third group of onions falls somewhere between storage and fresh onions. They are
large and somewhat flattened and look like brown storage onions, but their shelf life is
almost as short as that of the tenderest scallion. Indeed, these are the only onions that
can truly be considered to have a season. So-called sweet onions are harvested and con-
sumed in the spring, whether you're in Maui, Hawaii, or Vidalia, Georgia, or anywhere
in between. These on ions aren't so much sweet as they are low in sulfurous compounds
(which is why they must be eaten right away and need to be refrigerated, whereas storage
onions don't). They might more properly be called mild, not sweet, onions, and they are
sometimes perilously close to being bland. In fact, whereas normal brown storage onions
typically have a sugar concentration of about 12 percent, sweet onions average closer to 8
percent.
Perhaps because of their even lower concentration of harsh sulfurous compounds, well-
grown sweet onions have an appeal that is almost fruity. They can be eaten raw, out of
hand, just like an apple. In fact, they should be - cook them, and you only emphasize their
lack of character. They are crisp, with just a little of the background burr that lets you
know that you are, after all, eating an onion. And they cry out to be sliced for sandwiches
or cut up for salads.
Sweet onions are a triumph of vegetable marketing. The first to achieve notoriety was
grown in the early 1930s near Vidalia, Georgia, by a farmer named Moses Coleman. Vid-
alia was the local market center and was also the distribution center for a couple of major
supermarket chains. Liking the local product, the supermarket managers began shipping it
out to other member markets as early as the 1940s. By the 1970s more than 600 acres of
sweet onions were being harvested in the area, and the farmers banded together to form
a marketing cooperative. Because the Vidalia farmers were so successful, their neighbors
in the nearby town of Glennville began promoting their own sweet onion. After a little
intrastate sparring about who produced the sweetest onions (and facing even more com-
petition from sweet onion growers from outside the state), the groups decided to unite
and battle the world as one. Today more than 14,000 acres of so-called Vidalia onions are
planted in a wide swath across the state of Georgia.
So popular are they that at least half a dozen other places market sweet onions of their
own. In reality, not much differentiates those grown in Georgia from those grown in Maui,
South Texas or almost anywhere else for that matter. They are almost all the same variety,
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