Wild Onions: So Tasty

Incredible, vivid golden trout from Evolution Lake

I know this is a dumb blog title, but I really thought about it for a while and I couldn't think of a better one. Wild onions are SO tasty. And in certain areas, they're everywhere. Countless plants at every stream and in every meadow- easy to identify, easy to clean. And really, there's very little in this world more delicious than fresh trout cooked with wild onions. So how lucky are we that these two ingredients can be found at utmost freshness in one of the most popular outdoor destinations in the world?


We used wild onions a few ways this last week: trout wrapped in wild onions and cooked on a stone over a fire, trout poached in an onion broth, seasoned with sherry vinegar, and pizza pockets filled with ratatouille and/or sauteed onion flowers. Each one was delicious and refreshing- the juicy crunch of the onions satisfied a deep need for texture and the spicy-hot flowers delighted every passerby who joined us in feasting. I'm brimming with ideas now and can't wait to utilize them in a much wider array of applications.

There's no real recipe here, but a brief description of we identified and prepared the onions, so that you can do the same.

Identification: watch this cute video, but otherwise, look for purple chive flowers at stream crossings. They should smell of allium and when you dig up the root, it should look like onion, usually purple in color.

Preparation:  the whole plant is edible. The flowers are a great texture and very spicy, the leaves are good but a little tough, the outside layers of the root are very tough, and the inside layers of the root are very tender and strong flavored. I'll generally wash the whole plant, reserve the flowers for a special use, reserve the leaves for wrapping fish/inedible applications, and peel a few layers from the root until I just have the tender cores, which I chop and use like regular onions.

Applications:

Sauteed and stuffed into pizza pockets

Flowers stuffed into trout, then grilled on stone

Trout has been stuffed with flowers, wrapped in the rest of the plant, and grilled on the hot black stone in the background

Ready to eat!

As shown in the introductory photo, these fish were stuffed with flowers and steamed/poached on top of  torn up leaves, water, salt, and sherry vinegar which created a nice broth. 

the finished steamed trout