Lifestyle | Tips & Techniques

Grow Your Scallions – In a Glass!

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Get Your Scallion Fix – Economically

Onions. Garlic. RED LIGHTS! High FODMAP foods! Do. Not. Eat! Sigh. Not great words to hear and certainly throw most of us for a loop when we first dive into the low FODMAP diet and learn that onions and garlic are high in fructans and a huge trigger for many of us with IBS.

The idea of cooking and eating without onion and garlic to flavor our food is daunting. Luckily scallion greens are Green Light vegetables.

Grow your scallions in a glass!
Regrow your scallions in a glass!

Substitutions Rule

Hopefully by now you know that you can make or use Garlic-Infused Oil and that goes a long way to addressing this issue. But what about onions? Well, we’ve got Onion-Infused Oil, too, but one of my favorite ways to infuse onion flavor into my low FODMAP food is to use scallion greens where onions were initially called for.

If your recipe calls for ½ cup (72 g) chopped onions, try ½ cup (32) chopped scallion greens!

scallions growing vertical

Back to the Market

The problem was that I found myself back at the supermarket several days a week just to stock up on scallions, which was inconvenient and expensive and then, after using the Green Light Monash approved scallion greens I was throwing away the white parts and bulbs! I tried to keep up with it and get them to neighbors so as not to make waste, but that wasn’t always possible.

I hated spending so much money and creating garbage.

And Then, Brilliance Struck

OK, maybe I am patting myself on the back a bit too much, but I have to tell you that this felt ground-breaking to me. Robin was sprouting a potato for future planting at The Farm. I was on my way to the market to buy scallions for the Test Kitchen – yet again – and I spied the potato on the windowsill as I was running out the door.

What if, I thought, I just stuck the scallion bulbs in water? Could I re-grow the much needed scallion greens?

As you can see from the images, the answer is a resounding YES!

Scallion tops regrowing.

Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me?

I called my BF Mary, who is a gardener extraordinaire, and asked her if she had known this was possible and why she never told me. “Dédé, yes, I knew this,” she said. “It’s just that your needs for scallion greens were not the norm.”

Well, okay, she gets a pass! And now we all know!

So, go to the supermarket or farmer’s market and pick up a nice fresh bunch of scallions. Use the greens as needed, then place the bulbs in a glass with clean, cool water and place in a sunny spot. I use the windowsill over the Test Kitchen sink.

Change the water everyday and you have instantly become an indoor micro-farmer. Snip greens off as needed. I have kept the same bunch going for more than month. Enjoy!

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