Using Egyptian Walking Onions

[homesteader824]

I have heard of these before, and they say fall is the best time to plant them. Does anyone here actually eat or cook with these? Do the bulbs get large enough to use in cooking, like dice up a couple for a pot of chilli? Or are they really more of a curiosity? I have an 4'x8' raised bed that I would like to put some in. I realize it would take a couple of years before they were established enough to start harvesting. But, after 2-3 years, would I be able to go out to my bed of onions and dig up a bulb as needed, or a few of the tops, and cook with them? Would I need a lot bigger plot to actually use them as my onion source? If they are more of a hobby or curiosity than a practical source of onions then I wouldn't want to mess with them. Right now I average using about two medium onions a week.

[oneraddad]

I love my Egyptian onions and eat them all the time, plus they grow like crazy.

[Paquebot]

You use them mostly as green onions or spring onions. Large topsets can also be used as pearl onions.

Martin

[kentuckyhippie]

I have some and they come up early in the spring and I use some of them for green onions then the ones left continue to grow and send up tall stalks during the summer with little top set onions bulbs on them that I harvest a few for making small pickled onions. the rest fall off and start growing and I use them for green onions in the fall. what don't get used start the whole cycle over in the spring. I love mine

[Glacialtill]

We've been growing them for a while now. Started with a handful of the bulbs a friend gave us. We've mostly eaten them young, like scallions, but this year I pulled up and processed a bunch of the mature onions. The biggest were about the size of a shallot. Takes a bit of time to get them cleaned up for easy cooking since they're small, but it was satisfying work. Great taste, stronger than your average onion, actually makes me tear up when I chop them up and that's a good thing flavor-wise.

Plant them now. You can eat them at any stage. They last fine through the winter and will be one of the first green things in the garden in the spring. Next summer you can harvest the onion in the soil and replant the little bulbs on the top. If you leave the onion in the ground it'll just keep on growing and the bulbs usually find some place to sprout.

Last year was the first time I actually replanted the top bulbs with decent spacing instead of letting them just do their own thing in their patch. More room definitely makes for bigger onions.