Chefs Agree That Frozen Pearl Onions Are Just As Good As Fresh
One of the first places most of us head in the grocery store is the fresh produce section. After all, fresh is best, right? Not necessarily. Frozen fruits and vegetables get a bad rap, and there are even unsubstantiated rumors that frozen produce has fewer vitamins and minerals. But that's all they are — rumors.
In fact, frozen veggies and fruits are almost always flash-frozen on the day they're harvested, locking in their nutrients. Fresh produce, on the other hand, can lose as much as 30% of nutrients within three days of harvest (per the Chicago Tribune). So those strawberries that came to your grocery store on a truck from the West Coast (where the majority of America's strawberries are grown) are actually lower in vitamins and minerals than a bag of frozen berries, unless you live within a day's drive from where they were picked.
In addition to being perfectly nutritious, frozen veggies have some distinct advantages over their fresh brethren. For starters, they're often less expensive than fresh (per Southern Living). Frozen produce also has a much longer shelf life, and you can use as much or as little as you want at a time, which saves you even more money (wasting food is basically throwing money in the trash). Like other frozen vegetables, pearl onions are nutritious when frozen — and they're just as good to cook with.
When to use frozen veggies
In addition to nutritional falsehoods, frozen produce suffers from a little bit of an image problem. Say the words "frozen veggies," and you might picture your grandma heating up a casserole dish of frozen peas for Sunday dinner. So it may surprise you to learn that lots of professional chefs prefer to use frozen produce for certain tasks, as they have distinct advantages. Frozen spinach, for example, is frequently cited by the pros as a secret weapon ingredient because you can use it almost anywhere you use fresh, cooked spinach. Food writer Emma Wartzman says frozen spinach is her "weeknight flotation device" (via Bon Appétit).
Chefs also love frozen pearl onions, and it's for the same reasons your grandma kept a stash of frozen peas and carrots — they save a lot of time. The tiny, orb-shaped alliums each need to be peeled before they're turned into a pot of creamy pearl onions, and time is scarce in a commercial kitchen. Because the goal is for the onions to be cooked through, you don't have to worry about losing any texture in the onions from freezing. Plus, their taste is pretty comparable.
Chris Dickerson, chef and owner of Squirrel's in Savannah, Georgia, told Food & Wine that it's a no-brainer. "I love adding these to chicken pot pie, but I never want to peel them. The flavor of frozen pearl onions is almost as good as fresh," he said to the magazine.
Lean in to the freezer
One of the nice things about frozen vegetables, including pearl onions, is that most of them are frozen individually, so you can measure what you need for a recipe without needing to thaw a whole package. You can also add most frozen veggies and fruits right into a recipe without thawing, which means way less prep time when making glazed turnips with pearl onions.
Sometimes, being frozen is even a feature, such as using frozen banana or berries in a smoothie. The frozen water in the fruit will add thickness to your recipe, as though you'd thrown a few ice cubes into the blender. You can also use frozen veggies to cool a pan that's getting too hot, such as adding a handful of frozen spinach to scrambled eggs with tomato, which will keep the eggs from burning, or adding frozen pearl onions to a stew that's boiling to bring it down to a simmer.
If you need to defrost frozen veggies, however, be sure to do it the right way, by either leaving it in the refrigerator overnight, using the defrost setting on your microwave, or running the package under running cold water in the sink. Leaving anything out on the counter to thaw in the "danger zone" — between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, per the USDA — is inviting germs to take up residence.