DIY onion flowers. Onion chrysanthemum - an incomparable decoration for salads and meat dishes

Juicy and tender, rich in microelements and vitamins, leeks ripen in September. If this easy-to-care crop is not yet growing on your site, try to allocate some space for onions. You will learn how to properly grow leeks from our article.

Growing leeks at first glance will seem like a labor-intensive process: sowing seedlings, transplanting, hilling... But over the next six months, your work will pay off with a rich harvest of tasty, juicy greens.

Delicate flower from a white bulb.

1. Clean, wash and dry the white onion. Try to peel the bulb so as not to cut off the root seal. 2. We make four to five cuts throughout the bulb, two to three layers deep. 3. Bend back the outer layers, these will be the petals of the flower. Remove the inner cut layers using a knife. Since the petals are fragile, everything must be done with extreme caution. 4. We make the next cuts in a checkerboard pattern. And we repeat the steps from the previous paragraph: bend the first layer, remove the inner one. 5. Repeat these steps until you reach the middle of the onion. 6. After this, the onion must be placed in hot water for a few seconds. 7. Then place the onion in a marinade of water, vinegar and sugar for ten minutes. *Add the amount of ingredients for the marinade to taste. 8. If desired, the flower can be painted with food coloring. We take the flower out of the marinade, shake off excess liquid, straighten the petals and decorate the dish.

How can you work with onion skins?

Crafts made from onions can be real works of art. But how to work with onion peels? There are several methods:

Gluing the material onto a fabric base where the design has already been applied. Each piece is smeared with PVA glue and glued to the sketch, adjusting it to the previous one.
Transferring parts onto thin paper - in this case, the husk is transferred onto thin paper using glue, then the parts are very carefully cut out from the wrong side. The finished fragments are glued onto the cloth.

Gluing the material onto a fabric base where the design has already been applied. Each piece is smeared with PVA glue and glued to the sketch, adjusting it to the previous one.
Transferring parts onto thin paper - in this case, the husk is transferred onto thin paper using glue, then the parts are very carefully cut out from the wrong side. The finished fragments are glued onto the cloth.

Green leek flower

1. Fold a wide leek stalk in half.
Make frequent cuts on the fold side. 2. Roll it up to form the core of the flower.

3. Now you need to make petals from the wide parts of the onion, folding them in half.

4. Secure the flower with toothpicks and place on a plate.

We hope that you will be able to repeat the proposed color options for your holiday dishes.
It’s best to practice on a regular day first, and then surprise all the guests with your new creativity on a holiday. Don’t forget that only people can help you create culinary masterpieces in the carving style. We wish you success in mastering your new business!
What is hidden under the word “carving”, can carving be considered an art, how this art was born and developed, what points should be taken into account by beginning carving creators, you can find out

The charming onion chrysanthemum will undoubtedly become the best decoration for many dishes! It looks especially good on salads, such as shuba and Olivier, and also perfectly decorates meat and fish dishes, meat pies, appetizers and many other dishes. The most curious thing is that making such a chrysanthemum will not be difficult at all, as well as painting it later so that it accurately imitates the flower. Look at the two onion chrysanthemums below - yellow and pink: both were colored with natural ingredients. And how they look like a real flower!

And even a simple white onion chrysanthemum also looks very, very festive, wonderfully decorating a salad:

The work is quite simple, you can do it in a matter of minutes:

1. First, prepare large onions.

2. Peel it, cut off both the bottom and the top by about half a centimeter (even a little less). Then start cutting the onion in half, but not all the way through. If you don't cut it completely, the onion won't open, and if you cut it to the very end, it will fall apart. Cut with a sharp knife into as many divisions as possible - then the flower will be fluffy and very beautiful.

Ideally, you should end up with something like the one in the photo below. Place the cut onion in warm water for an hour - it will gradually open, like a flower. The opening time depends on the type of onion. It may take from 30 minutes to 2 hours.

3. Finally, the still white chrysanthemum can be painted. For a red or pink chrysanthemum, use fresh beet juice and dip the onion chrysanthemum in it, tips down (or whole, if desired). The intensity of the coloring depends on the length of exposure in the juice - check every 10 minutes to get the desired color.

Food should not only be tasty, but also beautifully presented. After all, first we eat with our eyes, and then we start the meal itself. You can simply decorate this or that dish with a sprig of herbs, but flowers made from whole vegetables will look much more beautiful. Bright roses, chrysanthemums, and daisies will turn any lunch into a celebration.

Any hard vegetables are suitable for flowers: cucumbers, daikon, radishes, tomatoes, onions, sweet peppers. You don’t have to be perfect at carving to make a beautiful flower craft. It is enough to learn a few lessons on the formation of flowers and every housewife will be able to aesthetically serve any ordinary dish. Even the usual “Herring under a fur coat” or “Olivier” will play differently if a bouquet of beet or carrot roses is on top. Next, we will take a step-by-step look at how simple vegetable flowers are made.

An ordinary bulb can easily turn into a gorgeous white chrysanthemum. This flower can be used to decorate a salad or main dish.

You will need:

1 small onion;
water at room temperature.

Manufacturing process:

For chrysanthemums, a small, dense onion is suitable. It is desirable that the onion be thin-walled. You can take white, pink or blue onions. Accordingly, you will get flowers of different colors.
Remove the peel from the onion, cut off the top and root. Using a sharp knife, cut the onion lengthwise, not cutting 0.5 cm to the bottom edge of the onion. When cutting, we start from the top edge, where the feather usually grows. Now we make another longitudinal cut perpendicular to the first one. The result is an onion almost cut into 4 parts.
We cut each quarter into several petals, moving the knife in the same direction (from top to bottom, without cutting to the end). We try to make the cuts carefully so as not to damage the adjacent petals.
The notches should be deep enough to make the flower lush. But if you cut too much, the bud will simply fall apart and will not hold its shape.
Pour water at room temperature into a deep bowl, place the onion in it so that the liquid completely covers it. Leave for one and a half hours. Gradually the onion will bloom in water and turn into a lush chrysanthemum, as in the photo
Depending on the type of onion, it may take more or less time to open. If time is running out, you can carefully spread the petals with your fingers, then the flower will be ready even earlier.

Harvesting

Leeks are harvested as early as September, but the plants tolerate frost well, so they can be left in the garden until spring or buried in V-shaped trenches. However, leeks are eaten at all stages of development, so it is not necessary to wait for the harvest until autumn, but collect young leaves throughout the season.

Of the few varieties of leeks, the relatively recently appeared F1 hybrids . They are popular and usually produce high quality crops, but are quite expensive and there are usually very few seeds per packet. To get more plants, use old resistant varieties, they are cheaper and there are much more seeds per packet.

Text: Alexey Borisov

Fresh cucumber rose

A beautiful rose can decorate any salad or place it in the center of a plate with sliced meat or vegetables. Anyone can make such a flower, even those very far from cooking and carving.

You will need:

1 long fresh cucumber;
vegetable peeler;
toothpicks.

Manufacturing process:

From a washed, dried cucumber, we begin to cut thin longitudinal strips with a vegetable peeler, from which we will subsequently form petals. We won't need the very first strip of skin.
Slowly cut the strips until we reach the core with the seeds. Because the cut parts with seeds will fall apart, then we turn the vegetable over on the other side. Cut strip by strip again. One medium cucumber yields 16-20 pieces.
We select the narrowest and shortest strip, roll it into a tube with a slight spiral offset, forming the middle of the flower.
Now we form the first petal. Without letting go of the center of the bud from your hand, take a strip of cucumber with your free hand and wrap one end of it behind the spiral tube. A little lower we make a bend away from ourselves, lowering the second end to the base of the bud. We wrap the remaining end of the strip around the base of the rose as low as possible. The petal is ready.
We apply the next strip to the base of the first petal, bend it in the same way away from ourselves and wrap the tip around the bottom of the flower. We try to form subsequent petals in a checkerboard pattern so that the base of the previous petal is covered by the next one. Because Since the vegetable strips are covered with sticky cucumber juice, the petals will easily stick together. If we come across blanks that are too long, we shorten them as we work.
Don't worry if somewhere the flower turns out to be asymmetrical or crooked, this will give the rose a more natural shape. To form one bud we will need about 11-12 petals.
At the end of the work, the flower can be secured with a toothpick, supplemented with several leaves from the same cucumber or several sprigs of parsley.

Using the same scheme, you can make roses from daikon, carrots, pickles, etc.

The orange root vegetable produces very beautiful bright flowers that do not require additional coloring. You can easily make a beautiful lily from a small carrot in a matter of minutes. It can be used to decorate a salad, aspic or snack cake.

You will need:

1 long carrot;
sharp knife.

Manufacturing process:

Wash the carrots and peel them. We make sure that there are no damage or wormholes on the carrot. We cut off the top and bottom parts of the root vegetable to make a barrel. Cutting off the excess, we form a pentagon from the carrots.
Armed with a sharp knife, we cut off a thin petal strip from each edge, not cutting a little to the very bottom. We sharpen each petal at the ends, cutting off the excess at the corners.
We cut off the next row of petals, but not from the place where the first ones were cut off, but slightly moving to the side. The petals should be staggered. Thus, we cut out 3-4 rows of petals depending on the thickness of the carrot.
We round the remaining central part to form a cone. At this point our lily is ready. The same white lily can be cut from daikon.

Edible car

You will need: a bun, 2 sausages, a black marker, a cabbage leaf, a cucumber, toothpicks, a knife.

Master Class

Cut out the interior of the future car in a rectangular shaped bun.
Cut 4 wheels for the cucumber car.
Insert toothpicks into the bun.
Attach the wheels.
Take sausages, make them smile and draw eyes.
Place a cabbage leaf in the interior.
Board the passengers.

The edible car is ready! I recommend watching this video!

As you can see, vegetables can be not only part of your diet, but also a material for making creative crafts. We wish you success!

Pink beet bud

If you need to beautifully decorate a dish with roses, then the most beautiful rose comes from table beets. The root crop has a bright color that smoothly changes shades.

You will need:

1 large beetroot;
small kitchen knife with a thin blade.

Manufacturing process:

First, let's prepare the vegetable for work. Wash the beets thoroughly and clean them. Now we give it the desired shape. On one side we outline the base of the bud. We give it a conical forum, cutting off all excess. The petals will be cut along the cone, the second part remains round.
We outline the place where the first lower petal will be located. Holding the root vegetable firmly, we cut off the first petal, not cutting 1-0.5 cm to the end. Moving from the center along the wall of the cone to its base. Closer to the base, the petal should thicken, and we try to make the edge very thin.
We cut out all the excess from under the petal. To do this, place the knife at an acute angle to the inside of the cut petal and cut off what is unnecessary. This way we create additional space between the rows of petals. We go around the circle, cutting off the petals - the first row is ready.
Now we begin to cut the second row, only forming the petals in a checkerboard pattern relative to the first row. We also remove excess pulp. If necessary, trim and round the edges of the petals.
We make the third level in the same way, only gradually reducing the size of the petals and changing their angle of inclination, because the cone will become increasingly truncated. The petals must be handled with extreme caution, because... They are very fragile and can break off with one careless movement.
Having made 4 levels, we proceed to making the center of the bud. We also cut out petals from it, only they turn out to be quite small.
We inspect the bud for the last time and straighten the petals. The pink beet bud is ready.

Cipollino

To make the “Cipollino” craft, take three medium-sized onions. A slightly sprouted vegetable is best for the head. Using a regular awl, make small holes for the eyes, mouth and nose. Fill the resulting openings with seeds. For example, make eyes from grape or apple seeds, a nose from corn grain, and a mouth from viburnum seeds.

The remaining bulbs are the body of our fairy-tale hero. Cut off the tops of the fruits, carefully insert thin twigs or toothpicks there and connect the bulbs together. To attach the head to the body, cut off the root part and place it on a toothpick. It’s not at all difficult to make such crafts.

Don't forget to find twigs to make the arms and legs of your Cipollino. It is better if these branches have branches at the end, so you will imitate fingers. Also take a small onion, cut it in half and attach it to the lower base of the body with a toothpick. The hero's shoes are ready! Crafts made from onions delight both children and adults.

The remaining bulbs are the body of our fairy-tale hero. Cut off the tops of the fruits, carefully insert thin twigs or toothpicks there and connect the bulbs together. To attach the head to the body, cut off the root part and place it on a toothpick. It’s not at all difficult to make such onion crafts with your own hands.

Sweet pepper flower

Using peppers of different sizes and colors, you can get a beautiful floral bouquet that you can even snack on.

You will need:

1 pod of sweet pepper with a tail;
cold water;
small kitchen knife.

Manufacturing process:

Taking the pepper by the tail, we make cuts with a sharp knife. We move from the top of the pod to its base, without cutting a couple of centimeters to the tail. Cut all the pepper pulp into thin strips, moving in a circle.
We cut each resulting narrow petal lengthwise into two more parts. Therefore, it is better to take meaty peppers. If we cut off only the peel, it will curl into a circle. And if a little pulp remains on the peel, then both petals will be straight.
When chopping the vegetable is finished, immerse the pepper in cold water for a quarter of an hour. The petals in the water will open and spread apart, making the flower voluminous and beautiful. If we leave only the skin, it will curl into a ring, forming beautiful curls along the radius of the flower. Such an elegant flower will become a real decoration of the festive table.

Vegetable tape recorder

You will need: a rectangular cardboard box, a knife, green onions, cucumber, carrots, bell peppers, radishes, grapefruit or orange, lemon, toothpicks, double-sided tape.

Master Class

Cover part of the box with double-sided tape.
Attach the onion feathers.
Make the entire box this way.
Make parts for a tape recorder by cutting a cucumber into 2 small strips and one large one.
Cut off the top, circle and half circle of the carrot.
Cut 2 circles from lemon and grapefruit.
Make the remaining parts of the tape recorder from radishes and peppers.
Attach all parts to the tape recorder using double-sided tape or toothpicks.

The vegetable tape recorder is ready!