Pickled Onion Review #12: Garner's Original Pickled Onions & Pickled Shallots

Alright, you magnificent pickled-fam! After the wild, funky ride with The Funky Food Co.'s flavoured offerings, it's time to return to something a bit more... traditional. In fact, the jar itself says "traditional". Today, we're tackling a brand that many of you have mentioned: Garner's. A name that should be attached to a firm of small-town solicitors. Instead, it's on jars of pickled onions. Life is full of surprises.

Specifically, we're looking at their Original Pickled Onions and their slightly more exotic cousins, the Pickled Shallots. Both jars proudly display the Garner's shield and "THE ULTIMATE TASTE & CRUNCH" tagline. I've seen politicians make less ambitious promises. Let's see if they can deliver.

These are onions you can easily find on a local supermarket shelf, which, in the grand scheme of this quest, is a rather important factor. After all, what good is the perfect onion if you need to take a pilgrimage to acquire it?

Garner's Original Pickled Onions

First up, the "Originals". The first thing to note is the size – these are proper, decent-sized onions. They're giving off serious main-character energy. None of that silverskin, side-kick-to-a-salad nonsense that requires a dessert spoon to get a satisfying mouthful. They are a lovely golden, translucent colour, floating in a rich, dark amber actual-malt vinegar. The crunch is fantastic, and the good, sweet, vinegary tang fills the mouth without being overly aggressive.

They don't quite have the assertive, full-mouth sharpness to the tang that The Funky Food Co's Dogs Bollocks Pickled Onions have. But that's OK, because it means you can eat more of them, one after another. These are pretty close to homemade pickled onions. The ingredients are simple: onions, barley malt vinegar, sugar, water, sea salt, and spices. The effect of the sugar and spice is subtle, strengthening and filling-out the flavour rather than changing it much.

Garner's Pickled Shallots

The shallots are a different beast. I'm starting to realise that brands see pickled shallots as a slightly different product, shovelling in more spices. I've got some Kit's Kitchen Pickled Shallots I'll be reviewing soon that takes this approach to another level. But Garner's here have done a fantastic job of making a slightly different, interesting product alongside the Traditional Pickled Onions.

They're a little sweeter, but have a more pronounced vinegary bite than the onions, but they layer on a much more rounded, complex flavour from the added spices. I'm really enjoying bouncing back and forth between the two products. My biggest peeve with the Shallots? The size of the jar. Why is it smaller than the onions? It is, I suspect, a deliberate ploy to make me buy more of them. It's working. I'm not happy about it, but it's working

The Verdict

After the flavour fireworks of recent reviews, it's refreshing to get back to basics. Both of these offerings from Garner's are excellent. They do exactly what they say on the tin (or jar, in this case).

Are they the best pickled onions I've ever tasted? No. But they might just be my new favourite everyday onion. They represent the gold standard for what you can - and should - expect to pick up with your weekly shop. All in all, I can see why people were calling these out as their personal favourites. I can't disagree with them at all.

Garner's Original Pickled Onions - 4 onions out of 5
🧅🧅🧅🧅❌

Garner's Pickled Shallots - 4 onions out of 5
🧅🧅🧅🧅❌

A rock-solid performance from both. They don't quite reach the dizzying heights of the M&S Traditional onions, but they are a fantastic and readily available choice for daily consumption. Utterly brilliant.

As a reminder, Garner's is owned by Baxters—the same company whose own-brand onions I've previously reviewed. The connection is fascinating because the two products are worlds apart. The Baxters-branded onions were a study in mediocrity, while these Garner's onions are superb: crunchy, tangy, and everything their corporate siblings are not. It’s a culinary mystery wrapped in an enigma, smothered in malt vinegar. Perhaps Baxters runs a secret, internal competition: one team is tasked with making the most sublime onion possible, while the other is challenged to create its beige, forgettable Vauxhall Viva of a cousin. If so, both teams are succeeding admirably.