Pickled Onion Review #4: Marks & Spencer Traditional Pickled Onions

What up, pickle fam! Here's the review of the M&S Traditional Pickled Onions I unjarred yesterday.

The jar label describes them as "hand peeled and classically pickled in rich malt vinegar for a tangy, distinctive flavour and crunchy bite" [user provided text]. For once, the marketing department hasn't been hitting the sherry. This is a remarkably accurate description, though I do wonder about the "hand-peeled" claim. Somewhere in the M&S supply chain, is there a warehouse full of people lovingly peeling onions whilst weeping into their minimum wage pay packets?

These are what pickled onions should be. They are big, properly crunchy, and pickled in a traditional malt vinegar that provides a sharp, satisfying tang that fills the mouth without the artificial harshness of added acetic acid. None of that nonsense you get with lesser onions that taste like someone's dissolved a car battery in white vinegar and called it a day.

The size is particularly noteworthy. These aren't the pathetic pearl onions that some manufacturers try to pass off as the real thing - the sort that look like they've been picked before puberty and bullied into a jar. No, these are proper, grown-up onions that have lived a bit, seen the world, and decided that their destiny was to be pickled to perfection.

I could quite happily eat these all day. However, my wife might have something to say about that, particularly when it comes to sharing a confined space afterwards. They are so good, in fact, that they're making me question my entire rating system. If I give these a 5/5, where do I go from here if I find a better onion? It feels too early in my pickled onion "career" to be awarding full marks. What if there's some perfect Uber-onion out there, pickled by virgin monks in ancient Tibetan vinegar? I'd have painted myself into a corner, ratings-wise.

The vinegar itself deserves a mention. It's proper malt vinegar, not the pale imitation spirit vinegar with added malt that some manufacturers use - the sort that tastes like it was made by someone who once heard a description of vinegar but had never actually tasted any. This is the real deal, the sort of vinegar that would complement a paper wrapper full of chip shop chips.

My only complaint, and it's a minor one, is that M&S have somehow managed to make even pickled onions feel slightly middle-class. I half expect to find a wine pairing recommendation on the label.

These are excellent. A benchmark against which all future onions will be judged. They've restored my faith in the British pickled onion industry, which, let's face it, had taken quite a battering after some of my previous reviews.

A near-perfect 4.5 onions out of 5.
🧅🧅🧅🧅🌗

(Deducting half a point partly for the rating system conundrum they've created, and partly because I refuse to believe that perfection can be achieved by a supermarket that also sells 20 different types of pumpkin.)