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Baked Spanish Onions
Wash and trim, without peeling, half a dozen Spanish onions of medium size. Put them into a saucepan, cover them with water slightly salted, and let them simmer very gently for about an hour. Take them up, drain them, wrap each onion in a separate piece of paper, put them into a moderate oven, and let them remain until quite tender. Before dishing them, remove the skins, sprinkle a little pepper and salt over them, and pour half a pint of good gravy into the dish with them. Time to bake, about an hour and a half. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A two-stage method — a long gentle simmer, then a slow bake in a paper wrapper — that produces onions collapsing-soft rather than browned. The wrapping is the point: it steams the onion in its own moisture and keeps the skin from scorching.
- Moderate ovenRead this as around 325-350F. The hour's simmer only part-cooks them; the oven stage finishes them to "quite tender" as well as concentrating sweetness. Colour is not the aim.
- The paper wrapperBaking parchment tied or twisted at the top does the job. Foil works but traps more steam and gives a wetter result. Set the parcels in a dish so any leakage is caught.
- Spanish onionsThe large, pale, mild variety sold under that name today is the right thing. A "medium" Spanish onion is still large by the standard of an ordinary cooking onion; a genuinely large one will need the full time and then some.
- Do not peel firstThe skin holds the layers together through nearly three hours of cooking. Peel after baking, when the outer layer slips off with the papery skin and takes any tough bits with it.
- Half a pint of gravyAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so about 1¼ cups. "Good gravy" here means a proper meat gravy or well-reduced brown stock, not a pan-drippings glaze — it is the sauce for the dish, poured round rather than over.
- Salting the simmering waterThe recipe asks only for water "slightly salted"; the seasoning proper comes with the pepper and salt before dishing and with the gravy.
- Total timeAbout an hour simmering plus an hour and a half baking, so budget two and a half to three hours. The simmer can be done a day ahead and the onions refrigerated in their skins.
- YieldSix onions for five or six people, as a side dish. As a vegetarian main with the gravy replaced by a mushroom or onion stock, count one large onion per person.