Sweet and Sharp: Hudson Valley Onions

An onion seedling is set into the soil at the Hearty Roots Community Farm in Tivoli.

What would any kitchen be without the ubiquitous onion? A native of Asia and the Middle East, onions have been cultivated for over five thousand years. Chopped, roasted, boiled, or grilled, today they appear in dishes the world over. And it’s a good thing, too, as the health benefits of onions are spectacular. Regular consumption promotes blood sugar-lowering effects; may lower your risk of several common cancers; and has been shown to lower high cholesterol levels and blood pressure, which reduces the risk of heart attack or stroke. Whether you favor the large yellow and purple globe onions grown in cold weather climates (such as ours), or the mild and sweet warm weather onions (Maui and Walla Walla), or the more elegant scallion and pearl varieties, there is nothing like an onion plucked directly from the soil.

“I don’t know which varieties of storage onions are sold in supermarkets,” says Benjamin Shute, farmer and co-owner of the Hearty Roots Community Farm in Tivoli. “But fresh market onions are a whole different product. We bunch them with their big green tops and they are beautiful and juicy. I’ve seen kids eat the sweet white onions raw, like apples.”

The illustrious history of onion farming in the Hudson Valley most certainly began in the famed black dirt of Orange County. Only 45 years ago the farmlands between the towns of Florida and Pine Island in Orange County produced half of all onions used in the country. Maire Ullrich, Vegetable Crops Educator at the Cornell Cooperative Extension only half jokes when she offers the technical name for the soil as “muck.”

The exceptional soil was formed over hundreds of thousands of years as receding glaciers carved a hole into the land, which then filled and became a lake. Over the millennia as plants grew and died with the seasons the area became a swamp. When settlers arrived from Holland and Poland they recognized the soil as similar to a type in their home countries. They set to work digging ditches so the water would drain into the Wallkill River, leaving in its wake about 12,000 acres of rich potting mix. Then they sowed the area’s most famous crop.

“Onions grow well in the black dirt, but so does everything else,” says Ullrich. The soil is regularly 50 to 60 percent organic matter and is sometimes as high as 80 percent (compared with a mere 10 percent organic matter on higher ground). It can hold nine times its mass in water, and because it is so fertile and rich in nitrogen and other minerals, plants such as onions, which have a high water requirement, flourish. As onion leaves don’t do well with overhead irrigation in humid New York, they thrive in the black dirt without massive irrigation equipment.

The onions of the “drowned lands,” as the area is known, are ready by the end of July and can be stored over the winter until about the middle of March. However, this once special niche has been usurped by the onions of Texas, Mexico, India, and Brazil, which are available year round. Today the area’s onion production ranks only sixth in the country. In shopping centers in the Hudson Valley, locally grown storage onions are recognizable by their dark skins and firm flesh. They remain dense when cooked, and because they are high in sugar they easily caramelize to bronze. Out-of-state onions, which arrive in late spring, are identified by their light and flaky skins and soft flesh, which turns mushy when cooked. “They are different both visually and in the culinary sense,” says Ullrich.