# Onions- smoked, dried & ground



## hillbilly jim

Saturday evening, I sliced up three pounds of yellow onions and smoked them all night with nothing but the AMNPS. Sunday evening, I put them in the dehydrator and ran them at 145* for 24 hours. This evening, I ran them thru my Secura grinder and got exactly one cup of coarse ground smoked & dried onions.


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## timstalltaletav

Hmm...  I like this idea.  Thinking it would have a better taste than the store bought variety of powder.


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## hillbilly jim

I haven't tried smoking the 'store bought', but I'm going to.


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## forluvofsmoke

So, not counting your time to prep for smoke, transferring to the dehydrator, grinding, etc, your cost @ (just guessing) $0.80/lb comes out at roughly $2.75, including electricity, to produce your 1 cup of smoked, dried, ground onion. Seems like a lot of work, but at least you have a workable process and the resources to make it happen again, if need be.

Were you considering smoking the dried, chopped onion sold in plastic containers? Just for giggles, I know the large plastic jugs cost around $12 at big-box outlets, but not sure what the volume of ground would be. OK, just grabbed ours for a peek: 3.12lbs dried & chopped...probably ~80% (maybe closer to 85%) loss of weight from drying, so for the sake of simplicity, (from 1/5 remaining weight) 5 x 3.12 = 15.6lbs chopped onion before drying...just a guestimate. By comparison $0.80 x 15.6lbs = $12.48 for those same onions, before chopping & drying. I'd have never guessed this one, but you're money ahead buying chopped/dried, then smoking those on mesh trays and grinding it all up. Not to mention, no peeling or knife-work for chopping, no drying...damned if I would have guessed this one!!! And, to top it all off, yield of finished ground onion would be roughly 5 cups, with a bit to spare...quite a batch for the pantry stash.

Check my math if you want, but I think It's correct.

Eric


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## disco

How'd it taste? Would you do it again? It sounds like an interesting experiment.

Disco


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## hillbilly jim

Disco said:


> How'd it taste? Would you do it again? It sounds like an interesting experiment.
> 
> Disco


It was great! I gave some along with some smoked cream cheese to a friend and she's still talkin' about it!


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## redheelerdog

Sounds awesome Jim, keep up the good work! Would love to see some pics of the process.

Sounds like your have a ball with it! Fun!













Smokem-if-U-Gotem.jpg



__ redheelerdog
__ Jul 31, 2016


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## Robb123

hillbilly jim said:


> Saturday evening, I sliced up three pounds of yellow onions and smoked them all night with nothing but the AMNPS. Sunday evening, I put them in the dehydrator and ran them at 145* for 24 hours. This evening, I ran them thru my Secura grinder and got exactly one cup of coarse ground smoked & dried onions.


Hi I have been doing this for a long time I built a smoker drier and do about 25 lb of onions at a time I like the sweet onions and use cherry wood. I get about 10% of the weight that I started with. The big trick to doing a lot at once is to not get above 105 deg or the onions cook and do not tast as good.  I also do this with jalapeño and grind them in a coffe grinder mix 50/50 with season salt(Lowery’s).  The grinder works on the onions too.


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## TomKnollRFV

I see some amazing dips on the horizon is all I gotta say..!


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## SmokinAl

TomKnollRFV said:


> I see some amazing dips on the horizon is all I gotta say..!



My thoughts exactly!!
Al


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