Fruit, vegetables and pulses

Red onion of the Margherita di Savoia salt pans

Red onion of the Margherita di Savoia salt pans, grown between salt and sea

On the strip of sand that divides the salt pans from the Adriatic, a handful of families in Margherita di Savoia, Zapponeta and Manfredonia keep and swap the seed of this red onion. The bulb is crisp and sugary, a touch sharper than the white onion of the same sands. A Slow Food Presidium wants to see it grown and cooked again.

• Deep red skins with purple glints, and the red runs on into the inner layers
• Marzaiola, maggiaiola, giugnaiola, agostana: each name gives the month it is pulled
• Grown without herbicides: weeds come out by hand or with growers' own home-made hoes

How to enjoy it. Eat it raw in salads, or in autumn and winter as the young sponzale; once mature it lifts octopus, fish soup and clam soup. Harvested in May and June, it keeps for a few months.

Production areas

Apulia

Season

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