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Wow, what a fun fact. I love food trivia. The great things about onions for all of you budget-minded cooks out there (and there are lots of us!) is that they are extremely cheap, and go a long way. Try making an onion and asparagus tart- it's fabulous and can be an appetizer or main dish with a nice salad on the side. http://budgetfoodie.typepad.com

slice them into rings, and cook them on a charcoal grill... of course, you can do this with any onion, but in my opinion, this works so great with the sweet onions because the sweetness makes them perfectly edible as a side dish of their own...

this is my version of the carmelized onions always discussed here - and i'm thinking of taking the advice and freezing some of my grilled sweet onions...

I live in the South (on the border between Alabama and Georgia)...and trust me...people here really DO eat Vidalia's raw like apples. SERIOUSLY! I can't, but I've sat and watched people do it.

I remove the papery layer of the Vidalia and quarter it without cutting through the root so the onion stays in one piece. I then place the onion in foil and place a few tablespoons of butter on, in, and around the onion and sprinkle some beef bouillon granules on top. Then I wrap it up into a tight ball and place it on the grill just before I put the meat on the grill.

Thirty minutes later you have something akin to french onion soup. Thanks Paula!

I grew up on the Fl / Ga border eating them like apples, although I've been known to put salt and pepper on them. I've seen "vidalia" onions in Los Angeles (where I live now), and they're just not the same.

vidalias are delicious.

also - my father in law will eat *any* onion raw, like an apple. ick!

Growing up in Atlanta, we could only get Vidalia's about once a year. So you'd have to find good ways to store them so that they lasted a long time. I remember one method my mother tried was hanging them in old pantyhose in the basement.

Nowadays, you can get them year round which makes me skeptical. Because sometimes they aren't legit. They can't possibly be the real thing we had.

I do remember being able to eat them raw. We, uh, sophisticated Atlantans didn't quite eat them like apples, but the real deal, fresh, lacks the bite of a regular onion and you really could eat them raw. I don't know about nowadays.

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I just carmelized a big ol' batch of onions last night before realizing they were Vidalia. They might be too sweet, we'll see tonight! I will admit that by the time they were starting to change color, I was nibbling them off the spatula.

@Rtclauss I'm going to have to try that! It sounds divine and anything akin to French Onion soup is a win in my book.

I grew up eating these in Georgia and can't find them in California.

One thing I'd do was slice off the top and bottom ends, peel the outer skin off, scoop a shallow hole in the top, pack it with butter and brown sugar, wrap it in foil, and bake it.

They're probably similar to Walla Walla Sweets. These sweet onions tend to be grown in less-sulphur-rich soil conditions. It's the sulfites in onions (and garlic, leeks, etc) that give them that spicy bite.