No. 198 - Vidalia

A few weeks ago we were out to eat and my daughter asked if we could order onion rings. We did. They were yummy. And she loved them.

So we started experimenting at home with some recipes. Today we tried one from Bobby Flay. We used white onions instead of the recommended Vidalia. Most recipes either call for white or Vidalia onions.

I learned today that the Vidalia onion gets its name from Vidalia, Georgia where the onions were first grown in the early 1930s. It is an unusually sweet variety of onion, due to the low amount of sulfur in the soil in which the onions are grown.

Mose Coleman is believed to have been the first grower of the now popular onion. In 1931 Coleman discovered that his onions were not hot, but rather mild. He managed to sell his onions for $3.50 per fifty-pound bag, a very good price at the time. Other farmers in the area, who through the depression years had not been able to get a fair price for their produce, thought Coleman had found a gold mine. They soon began to produce onions too.

The Vidalia onion is Georgia's official state vegetable.