Do cocktail onions need to be pressure canned

Question

I've decided that the cocktail onions I can buy pale in comparison to some that I've had in better establishments. They're tiny and lack crunch, even when I try to buy something top-notch.

So, I think I'd like to try my hand at making them. There are a ton of recipes out there, like https://www.marthastewart.com/1144099/cocktail-onions. I've never done any canning before, and it's a bit intimidating, so I'm reading up on this.

Now, I've come across things that say since onions are low-acid, they should be vacuum canned. Do I need to do that for pickled cocktail onions, even though the recipes I've seen don't say to? Does the acidic pickling have anything to do with this? If I do need to vacuum can, will that make the onions mushy?

Answer 1

In canning, you can't make up your own recipes. There are too many "gotchas" which you cannot predict or measure. So while in principle yes, acid will make a low-acid food cannable in a water bath, just taking a recipe meant for other use and canning it is not safe. And you have to follow it exactly - if the recipe is for cut-up onion for example, you cannot use whole onions.

There likely are recipes for canning pickled onions, look around for those, and try them out.