Sirke Wala Pyaaz – Indian Pickled Onions Recipe

The sirke wala pyaaz is an easy to make Indian pickled onions recipe that uses just a few ingredients. Popularly served in Indian restaurants, here’s how to make pyaaz sirka at home easily.

Love that crunchy onion pickle that’s served in Indian restaurants? You know, the pinkish tinged onion rings that are just so sweet, and just so salty, and just so tangy and just so crunchy? We love it too! Much more than we love mango pickle or tomato pickle. But you don’t have to wait till you go to a restaurant to eat your favorite pickle. Here’s how to easily make the sirke wala pyaaz at home!

What ingredients do you need for pickling onions?

We make enough pickled onions to last a week at a time. So our quantities are a tad big. Cut them in half if you want to. Anyways, we use 4 medium-large onions cut in rings, 2 slit green chillies, 5 tbsp sugar, 3 tbsp salt, 200 ml vinegar and 300 ml water. If you don’t want to use red onions, use about 500 grams of white onions or shallots cut vertically into wedges.

How to make Indian pickled onions?

There’s no rocket science of how to pickle onions. It’s a simple age-old method that takes just a few minutes and results in some great tasting pickled red onions, and even some yummy quick-pickled white onions.

Simply cut the onions into rings, put them in a jar with the rest of the ingredients, and leave it be for 24 hours. That’s really it. There’s no need to heat the brine at all. We’ve seen quite a few recipes out there that require pre-heating a solution of salt and sugar, or adding color, and whatnot. But we do it naturally. Yep, just throw stuff together and forget about it for 24 hours.

Also, you can use any vinegar, but we prefer to use apple cider vinegar since it’s a tad healthier.

After 24 hours, take the onions out of the vinegar solution transfer to another container and refrigerate till you eat them. These onions will last for a week or so.

And don’t just throw away the vinegar solution. Reuse it! That’s what we do. Add one or 2 more tbsps more of vinegar to the solution, and dunk some new onions in there. We reuse the brine up to 3 times. You could use it a lot longer, but after a few times it starts to stink really bad because of the sulphurous acids that have been removed from the onions. So to save them noses, it’s time to discard the solution.

But that’s really it! Simple tart and crunchy pickled onions the way it’s served in Indian restaurants with delicious Indian food!

You can also make pickled shallots

Shallots are easier to cut than red onions. They just require chopping into quarters and adding to the vinegar brine. We sometimes also add a bit of turmeric to make it healthier.

Add Beetroot for Natural Pink Color

Want the pickled onions to look pretty?Add some slices of beetroot to the pickling mixture. You don’t need to cook the beetroot like in other recipes. We just throw a few slices in there and the color is absorbed naturally.

The beetroot of course loses color and turns whitish, but it’s good to eat too.

How to Make Blue Pickled Onions

Now, this is a tricky one, but we managed it. We figured if we can make jade garlic or laba garlic, why not make blue or green pickled onions too. So what we did was add the garlic to be pickled to the bottom of the jar and the onions at the top. The copper sulfate formed by the garlic travels up to the onions and they capture the color. Perfect, isn’t it? If you’re doing this, add about 100 grams garlic for about 500 grams onions.

Cooking Tips and Alternatives

• If you don’t want red onions rings, use shallots aka white onions, and cut them into four quarters.
• For a healthier version, add half a teaspoon of the turmeric powder to the brining solution.
• Serve with rotis or rice and your favorite curries, be it butter beans curry, mutton paya curry, or mustard chicken.
• If you want a natural pink colour, add some sliced beetroots to the mix when you soak it.
• For a blue or green colour, add garlic cloves.

Other Pickle Recipes You Might Like

• Sweet and Tangy Mango Chutney
• Buttery Oyster Mushrooms
• Green Pista Chutney
• Bombay Duck Pickle
• Egg Bhurji Recipe