Pickled Onion Review #13: Bartons Pickled Onions & Bartons Silverskin Onions

It’s been almost a month now. I'd tell you I’ve been really busy, but that wouldn’t be true. I'll leave the details to your imaginations, but in summary my motivation decided to take an unexpected break, and I’ve had to push myself to tackle yet another jar of pickled onions.

But duty calls, and so I find myself back in the saddle, this time with two jars procured from the icy depths of... Iceland. Because when you think "quality", you naturally think of the place that sells frozen pizzas in packs of four.

Bartons Traditional Pickled Onions

The jar makes a bold claim: "tangy" and "crunchy". A promise as reliable as a politician's....well, let's not resort to tired political clichés. We've all heard them and this politician's promises are always 100% guaranteed reliable.

To its credit, it's pickled in actual malt vinegar, which automatically elevates it above the chemical bathwater some brands favour. But that, I'm afraid, is where the commendations end.

The "crunch" is a lie. The outer layers have the structural integrity of a wet paper bag, suggesting the onions were boiled into submission long before they saw the inside of a jar. You bite down expecting a satisfying crack and are met with a squish. It's the textural equivalent of a disappointed sigh. At £1.25, at least you're not investing heavily in satisfaction, but when the far superior Garners exists in the same universe, choosing these is an act of profound self-sabotage.

Bartons Sweet Silverskin Onions

And then there's these. One bite and I was violently transported back to DJing at one of many weddings and parties in draughty village halls in 1989. I can almost smell the warm sausage rolls and taste the flat lemonade. These are, without a shadow of a doubt, the exact same tiny, sad, white orbs that adorned a thousand foil-wrapped grapefruit "hedgehogs" at every home-catered buffet of my early DJ career. It's not an entirely unpleasant memory, but it's not one I'd choose for my pickled onion moments. Those buffets had their upsides.... trays of over-catered egg-mayo sandwiches that I was encouraged to take home at the end of the night, for example. But the insipid onions were not one of them. 

The ingredients list reads like a cry for help: spirit vinegar, sugar, and the ever-mysterious "flavouring," because specifying an actual flavour would be setting themselves up for disagreement. These aren't so much pickled onions as they are onion-shaped vehicles for delivering vaguely sweet vinegar. The jar helpfully suggests serving them "as part of a buffet". Yes, a buffet to accompany a 1980s retro event.

The Verdict:

Bartons Pickled Onions - 2 onions out of 5
🧅🧅❌❌❌

Bartons Sliverskin Onions - 2 onions out of 5
🧅🧅❌❌❌

Bartons has managed to create two jars of such profound and aggressive mediocrity that they almost become a statement. They are, to use my fave analogy for mediocrity, the beige Vauxhall Vivas of the pickled onion world: functional, forgettable, and a source of quiet despair. Will I buy them again? Only, to stretch a point, if I find myself in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where all other sources of pickled onions have been wiped out. And even then, I'd probably think twice.

Next time, I'm going upmarket. My soul needs it.