Norway · Vegan
Red onion pickle
About this recipe
Norwegian cooking reflects its long coastline and short summer: cured and smoked fish, preserved meats, root vegetables, dairy, and the sweet-bread traditions of Christmas baking. Ingredients are few; quality and freshness do the work.
As a vegan dish, Red onion pickle is built without animal products — and the technique compensates for what dairy or meat would normally contribute, leaning on browning, roasting, fermentation, and umami-rich ingredients.
The scaler above resizes every ingredient to the number of servings you actually want; Cook Mode walks you through the recipe one step at a time with hands-free timers.
Recipe data is sourced from TheMealDB's open community database; ScaleRecipe handles the curation, the scaling math, the editorial commentary, and the conversion utilities woven into each page.
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Method
- Peel the onions, cut them in half from top to bottom and finely slice into half-moon pieces. Put in a colander placed over a bowl and sprinkle with salt, lightly turning over the onion pieces with your hands so the surfaces are all covered. Set aside for an hour or so to brine.
- Meanwhile put the vinegar, 50ml/2fl oz water and the sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer, stirring to help the sugar dissolve, and cook for a couple of minutes. Set aside.
- Pack the onions into the sterilised jars, sprinkling in a little pepper as you go. Cover with the warm vinegar and finish by tucking a couple of bay leaves down the side of the jars. Seal. The onions are best kept in the fridge and used within to 4 weeks.
Cooking notes
Most vegetable dishes scale linearly, but be mindful of pan crowding — vegetables that should brown will steam instead if packed too tightly.
For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.
When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.
Scaling notes
Scaling Red onion pickle
Red onion pickle is written for around four servings as it stands on this page — scaling it up for a party or down for a meal-for-one is the small math problem most home cooks face every week. Here's how this particular dish responds to scaling, what changes linearly, and what doesn't.
Plant-based dishes are typically the most forgiving to scale. Red onion pickle uses ingredients that scale almost entirely linearly; the main considerations are pan capacity (don't crowd vegetables — they steam instead of browning) and seasoning (use 1.5× the salt and spices when doubling). Cooking time barely changes for sautés and sheet-pan preparations.
Skip the math entirely — ScaleRecipe's scaler rewrites every ingredient line above with proper culinary fractions and smart unit promotion the moment you change the serving count. Open the scaler →
Beyond the recipe
Substitutions & make-ahead — Red onion pickle
If you're cooking Red onion pickle for a future meal (or doubling up for leftovers), here's how this dish handles storage, reheating, and the timing decisions most recipes don't spell out.
Make-ahead, storage, and reheating
Plant-based dishes generally store better than animal-protein recipes — there's no cooked-meat texture degradation to worry about. Red onion pickle keeps well refrigerated for 3-4 days. The main thing to watch is texture: leafy greens wilt, raw crunchy elements soften, croutons go limp. Add those at serving time rather than at the day-of cook. Pulse and legume-based dishes (beans, lentils) often genuinely improve overnight as spices marry.
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Red onion pickle
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OpenCooking time
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OpenIngredient density
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OpenOpen in main scaler
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OpenFrom the journal
Original essays on the small details.
The why behind the technique — original writing on the ingredient and equipment choices that separate a good cook from a frustrated one.
Reading a recipe like a chef
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Beyond the USDA's 3–4 days: the variables that actually determine the safe window
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Where this recipe sits in the wider tradition.
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