Leek is one of the vari­eties of onions, which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, house­wives do not often use in cook­ing, although its taste is much thin­ner and more ten­der than that of onions. Leek is also rich in vit­a­mins A and B, min­er­als such as cal­ci­um, mag­ne­sium, sodi­um, phos­pho­rus, iron, it also con­tains a large amount of ascor­bic acid, which increas­es by 1.5 times dur­ing stor­age by spring.

Inter­est­ing! The leek is one of the offi­cial sym­bols of Wales, depict­ed on the coat of arms.

March 1 is a very impor­tant date for the peo­ple of Wales, this is the day of St. David, who is con­sid­ered the patron saint of the coun­try. On this day, fes­tive events are held through­out the coun­try: fes­ti­vals, con­certs, street fes­tiv­i­ties, tra­di­tion­al Welsh dish­es are pre­pared — cake and leek soup. And all because there is a leg­end about the priest David, who, before the bat­tle of the Welsh with the Sax­ons in 640, advised the sol­diers to attach leek feath­ers to their hats to dis­tin­guish them­selves from the ene­my. The bat­tle was suc­cess­ful­ly won, and the leek became the emblem of Wales.

Leek is low-calo­rie, it can be safe­ly intro­duced into the diet for those who adhere to prop­er nutri­tion or diet. Leek is also use­ful for the fol­low­ing dis­eases:

• urolithi­a­sis dis­ease,
• rheuma­tism,
• gout,
• ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis,
• obe­si­ty,
• ner­vous exhaus­tion,
• prob­lems with the heart and blood ves­sels,
• avi­t­a­minosis,
• dis­eases of the gas­troin­testi­nal tract.

Impor­tant! It is not rec­om­mend­ed to use raw leeks for peo­ple suf­fer­ing from dis­eases of the stom­ach and duo­de­num.

Leek can be attrib­uted to one of the most valu­able veg­etable crops, the reg­u­lar use of which strength­ens the immune sys­tem and pro­tects against colds. But in order for the leek to be eat­en at any time, you should fol­low some rules for its stor­age and har­vest­ing.

How to properly prepare leeks for storage at home

Despite the fact that this crop is con­sid­ered resis­tant to cold (up to ‑7 ℃), har­vest should be done in a time­ly man­ner: before the start of frost. In order for leeks to be suit­able for fur­ther stor­age, you need to do the fol­low­ing:

• gen­tly dig up the onion with a fork or shov­el,
• shake the soil from the roots
• remove dam­aged and dis­eased leaves,
• cut off ⅔ of the roots with­out hit­ting the bot­tom of the bulb,
• air dry for a cou­ple of hours.

After these actions, the leeks must be thor­ough­ly washed, dried again, and then pro­ceed to har­vest­ing.

How to Harvest Leek

There are sev­er­al ways to har­vest leeks for the win­ter:

• pick­ling,
• dry­ing,
• freez­ing,
• salt­ing.

Now about each of them in more detail.

Pickling

Pick­ling for the win­ter in jars is one of the most pop­u­lar ways to make blanks at home. In order to pick­le leeks you need:

• select­ed, washed and com­plete­ly freed from roots and green­ery, cut the white stems across into 3–4 parts,
• put all parts in a jar (the opti­mal vol­ume is 1 liter),
• pour mari­nade (mari­nade is pre­pared from water, salt, vine­gar, lemon juice, spices, etc.),
• quick­ly and her­met­i­cal­ly close the jar,
• wrap the jar with warm mate­r­i­al and put the lid down.

Drying

To pre­serve as many nutri­ents as pos­si­ble, leeks are dried.

For this you should:

• peel the sort­ed onion, cut off the roots and upper parts,
• cut into rings the remain­ing parts, divid­ing the result­ing sec­tions among them­selves,
• dry the onion in an elec­tric dry­er, and in its absence — in the oven.

Advice! The most opti­mal tem­per­a­ture for dry­ing in the oven is 50–60 ℃. Dry for 2–3 hours with the door ajar and stir occa­sion­al­ly.

Store leeks dry, prefer­ably in a breath­able con­tain­er.

Freeze

Basic steps for stor­ing frozen leeks:

• Cut the washed, peeled and dried onions as you plan to use them after defrost­ing.
• Put the chopped onion on a flat dish, cov­er with cling film or a bag and place in the freez­er for 3–4 hours. This is nec­es­sary so that the leek freezes a lit­tle, and sep­a­rate rings are obtained, which can be eas­i­ly poured into a con­tain­er for long-term stor­age.
• Leek should be pack­aged in air­tight con­tain­ers (spe­cial food con­tain­ers, zip bags with a tight clo­sure), as the plant has a bright aro­ma that can spread to oth­er foods in the freez­er.

Advice! It is bet­ter to freeze leeks in small por­tions, as the nutri­tion­al val­ue is lost when re-freez­ing.

salting

A fair­ly sim­ple way to save leeks for the win­ter is salt­ing. To do this, cut the peeled onion (rings, half rings, cubes) and mix thor­ough­ly with salt (it is rec­om­mend­ed to use rock salt, 50 grams of salt will be need­ed per 1 kilo­gram of onion). The result­ing mix­ture is laid out in pre-pre­pared jars and closed with lids. It is advis­able to take jars with a vol­ume of 1 liter so that an open jar is not stored for a long time.

Conditions: humidity and temperature

If the above meth­ods of stor­ing leeks are not to your lik­ing, you can keep the root crop fresh after har­vest­ing. Onion stor­age con­di­tions are as fol­lows:

• opti­mum tem­per­a­ture from ‑1℃ to +1℃,
• air humid­i­ty 80–85%.

How to keep fresh

There are three main ways to keep leeks fresh at home:

• in a refrig­er­a­tor,
• on the bal­cony,
• in the base­ment.

Impor­tant! With these meth­ods, onion stor­age will be short­er.

The table clear­ly shows infor­ma­tion on the shelf life of leeks in var­i­ous ways:

Stor­age method	Shelf life
Pick­ling	up to 12 months
Dry­ing	up to 12 months
Freeze	more than 12 months
salt­ing	up to 12 months
In a refrig­er­a­tor	up to 4 months
On the bal­cony	up to 6 months
In the base­ment	up to 6 months

Below we will con­sid­er how to store onions fresh.

In a refrigerator

Before you put the leek in the refrig­er­a­tor, you need:

• select the best spec­i­mens with­out dam­age from the entire crop,
• wash thor­ough­ly (espe­cial­ly the base of the shoot),
• let dry,
• pack­aged in plas­tic bags with small ven­ti­la­tion holes made.

Now you can put the leeks in the refrig­er­a­tor and store in this form at a tem­per­a­ture not high­er than +2 ℃.

On the balcony

If there is not enough space in the refrig­er­a­tor, you can use the bal­cony to keep the leek fresh. For this method, box­es are need­ed. You can use both plas­tic and wood­en (the opti­mal size is meter per meter). Lay a plas­tic film on the bot­tom of the box, with its help mois­ture will last longer. Sprin­kle a thin lay­er of wet sand over the film. Put pre-pre­pared (washed, peeled and dried) onions in a box and cov­er with the remain­ing sand so that the white stems are com­plete­ly cov­ered.

Make sure that the humid­i­ty on the bal­cony is 80–85% and the tem­per­a­ture does not fall below ‑1 ℃.

In the basement

The hap­py own­ers of the cel­lar and base­ment will not have a ques­tion where to store leeks, as cel­lars and cel­lars are an ide­al place to store veg­eta­bles. Stor­ing onions in the base­ment is no dif­fer­ent than stor­ing them on the bal­cony. Box­es are also used in which the onion “sits down”. The main thing is to observe the tem­per­a­ture regime and humid­i­ty.

Recommended varieties for long-term storage

In nature, there are ear­ly-ripen­ing, mid-ripen­ing and late-ripen­ing vari­eties of leek. For long-term stor­age, late-ripen­ing vari­eties are best, although they are sharp­er and tougher in taste.

The best vari­eties of late-ripen­ing leeks include:

• “Karan­tan­sky”
• “Alli­ga­tor”
• “Ban­dit”
• “Ele­phant MS”

These vari­eties of leek can be safe­ly used for har­vest­ing and stor­ing it fresh.

There was a time when Parisians con­sid­ered leeks to be “poor man’s aspara­gus”, because the unpre­ten­tious onion grew well even in win­ter and did not need spe­cial care. Leek was sold in abun­dance, and any­one could buy it. Even Pablo Picas­so dur­ing the Sec­ond World War paint­ed the paint­ing “Still Life — Skull, Jug and Leek”, in which the leek sym­bol­ized hunger. Today, leek is con­sid­ered a valu­able and healthy veg­etable, enriched with vit­a­mins and min­er­als. The most juicy and fleshy part is the white stem. It can be boiled, stewed and fried. There are a huge num­ber of leek recipes, among which every­one will find their favorite dish using leeks. Green leaves can also be used in cook­ing, adding them to sal­ads, sauces and snacks.