Pickled Onions

While it's easy to buy pickled onions, it is easy to make them for yourself, and much nicer.

Ingredients
small onions
salt
pickling vinegar

Equipment
knife
board
bowls
jars

time:
peeling onions
24 hours to soak onions in brine
a few weeks to mature

Process

Peeling onions is, quite frankly, a pain. You need a sharp knife to cut the tops and bottoms off, and possibly a smaller knife (or your finger nail) to start peeling off the skin. You need to remove the brown papery skins down to the white layers, and you don't cut the onion in half, so it isn't trivial. Also, since there are so many onions to peel, you are quite likely to find your eyes watering. Do not rub your eyes with oniony hands. I find it helps to wash my hands from time to time. It also seems to wear off after a while. Anyway, put the discarded onion skins in one bowl and the peeled onions in another.
When finished, if the onions look grubby, wash them. (It would be a good idea to wash your hands again, as well!) Make a brine with half a bowl of water, and as much salt as it will dissolve. This is several large spoonfuls rather than the odd pinch! Put the onions in the brine and leave them for 24 hours. This brining process is necessary. It draws out the water from the onions. One problem with home-made onions is that they go soggy after a while, and the brining stops this.
Don't leave the onions in the brine for much more than 24 hours, as their insides may start to pop out (I think that the brine shrinks the outside a little). Pour off the brine. Clean some jars thoroughly. Put the onions in, and then fill up with pickling vinegar.
Leave for several weeks for the vinegar to soak in to the centre of the onions.

Other ideas

You need small onions. You might be able to buy pickling onions in the autumn at market stalls. You can also buy shallots, but they are quite expensive. You can grow your own shallots, and if you grow onions and they don't grow well, then you don't feel that you've wasted the crop!
I suggest using pickling vinegar. This is stronger than ordinary vinegar. You can use ordinary malt vinegar, but the pickled onions risk going soggy. You'll just have to eat them quickly! Traditionally, pickled onions are in brown vinegar. Last time, I could only find transparent pickling vinegar, so I used a mixture of that and ordinary malt vinegar, which worked OK. You could try other vinegars if you wish, but you do need a lot of vinegar, and it just gets thrown away after you've eaten the onions.
Some people put spices in the vinegar. I don't bother. But if you want to, then they would be whole spices, and strong ones, which can fight against the taste of the vinegar.
The best jars to use are the ones that the pickling vinegar comes in. However, ordinary malt vinegar just comes in bottles, which isn't helpful! But there are all sorts of jars that you can use. Jam jars, coffee jars, ... Anything that can store vinegar, get an onion in (and out) of the neck, has a airtight top (they do whiff, a little) and doesn't leak. Vinegar is a reasonably good disinfectant, but it's a good idea to wash the jars well in hot water before starting. They will tend to smell of vinegar for ever after, unfortunately!