Quick Pickled Red Onions 30 Minute Recipe With 4 Ingredients

Make them in 30 minutes without cooking and with four ingredients. We are sure you’ll want to put them on everything. They enhance the presentation and taste of most dishes.

Ingredients & Substitution

How to make quick pickled red onions

Variations

Serving suggestions

Questions

Storage

More recipes with onions

The quick pickling with vinegar and lemon juice mellows the onion’s sharp, pungent flavor, transforming it into a pleasant, tangy, and zesty taste. You’ll love them on tacos, burritos, spreads, pizza, salads, bowls, and more. They are the perfect topping to add a wow effect and boost the taste of most dishes.

Red onions

Substitute white or yellow onions for red onions. However, with their pretty pink hue, red onions look gorgeous as a topping.

Vinegar

You can use white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, rice vinegar, and red wine vinegar.

Lemon juice

We like to squeeze in the juice of a lemon to add mild fruitiness and complexity to the pickled red onions.

Salt

A pinch of sea salt or kosher salt helps soften the onions and adds flavor.

Sugar

Sugar is optional; we generally don’t add it to our quick pickled red onions. You can add a teaspoon or two if you like yours with some sweetness. White sugar or brown sugar both work. Substitute maple syrup, agave syrup, honey, or another sweetener for sugar.

Spices

Spices allow you to customize your pickled red onions based on the food you serve. We like to add a pinch of sumac (a Middle-Eastern spice that enhances the red of the onions and adds a pleasant citrusy flavor) and red pepper flakes for a hint of heat. You can also add peppercorns, a bay leaf, fresh herbs, mustard seeds, thyme, oregano, cumin seeds, rosemary, coriander seeds, and crushed garlic cloves to the brine mixture. Pinch the sliced onions with your fingers to separate the layers. Add the onions to a bowl or a mason jar and cover with vinegar, lemon juice, salt, optional spices, sugar, and red pepper flakes. Tip: There’s no need to boil the ingredients in a saucepan and pour the liquids over the onions when making our quick pickled red onions recipe. Stir, mix, and press down the onions in the liquid. Set them aside at room temperature for 30 minutes or until they have softened up, lost their sharpness, and acquired a bright fuchsia color and tangy taste. They work wonderfully on black bean salad, black bean soup, tacos, burritos, scrambled tofu or eggs, burgers, nachos, avocado toast, enchiladas, quesadillas, fajitas, hummus, fatteh, grain bowls, most salads, soups, curries, and in sandwiches. Some delicious dishes to pair them with are:

Asian cucumber salad. Flatbread pizza. Buddha bowl. Mediterranean bowl. Sliced avocado on toast with chipotle sauce. Vegan breakfast burrito. Sweet potato hash in a wrap. Roasted carrots with yogurt sauce and pesto drizzle.

Refrigerator: Store them in the pickling liquid in an airtight container, jar, or bowl covered with foil. They keep for about two weeks. Freezer: We don’t recommend freezing this recipe.

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