Or, as they’re called in French, les oignons doux de Lézignan. This is my fifth year of writing a blog about our garden and I think I’ve posted about these sweet onions each year – last year’s post is here – so I won’t repeat what I’ve written any more than to say that this village has had the name ‘la Cèbe’ given to it, from the Occitan ceba meaning onion, because of the tasty variety of sweet onions that grow here. Each year we go to buy young plants from one of the producers in the village – whose website is here – and plant them in our garden. We don’t achieve the record weights of up to 2 kilos per onion, but we do grow beautiful large onions that are so sweet they can be eaten raw when young and then later in the summer used for cooking.
Just dropped into the ground with the green shoots trimmed a bit and leaning over slightly in their double row, the onions will soon get established (we hope) and will stand up straight.
olivesandartichokes 
Beautiful, and closer in name to the Spanish Cebollas than oignons…. Wishing you a sweet, tasty bumper crop!
Thanks! Yes, a lot of Occitan words are nearer to Spanish than French, and very close to Catalan.
I’m very keen on these sweet onions. There’s a similar onion from Roscoff, I believe. Lovely picture of the bag and plants:)
Thanks! I’ve heard of the Roscoff onion, but not eaten it. There’s also a similar one from Trebons in south-west France which we grew last year.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they are related to calçots – overgrown sweet onions, cooked on a BBQ and served with
Salbitxada sauce in Cataluña.
Yes, when they’re young they a bit like calçots and we eat them grilled on the fire, with Romesco sauce made from almonds and peppers – delicious. But these cebas have quite large bulbs when left to grow.
I find freshly harvested onions to be vastly under-rated. Lucky for me, my neighbor plants plenty each Spring and shares his bounty with me throughout the Summer. I doubt if his have your onions’ pedigree but they are quite tasty, in their own right.
My neighbor had wild onions in his yard last year, origin unknown, and he was pulling them up and pulling his hair out. I rescued a few from his compost with his blessing and now I have them coming up too! One man’s weed…. mmmmm! 🙂