Home › Vegetable Recipes › Braised Onions
Braised Onions
4 Spanish onions 2 sheep's kidneys 1 cupful (1/2 pint) brown gravy Salt and pepper to taste Wipe and skin the kidneys, then slice them finely, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Peel the onions, scoop out the center portion, and fill with the kidneys. Place them in a casserole, add the gravy, and cook slowly for about two hours. Serve hot. 12 potatoes
A Victorian-style casserole dish: large onions hollowed out, packed with seasoned kidney, and left to stew gently in brown gravy until both are tender. It is slow, forgiving cooking that rewards a tight lid and a low oven.
- The vesselA "casserole" in older cookery books generally means a lidded earthenware or fireproof pot used on the stove or in the oven, not a shallow baking dish. Use a heavy lidded pot just wide enough to hold the onions upright in a single layer, so the gravy comes partway up their sides.
- "Cook slowly"The recipe does not say whether the pot goes on the stove or in the oven. On the stovetop take it as the barest simmer; if you use an oven, keep the heat low. Two hours of gentle cooking collapses the onion into sweetness and leaves the kidney tender, while a hard boil drives off the gravy and turns the kidney tight and grainy.
- A cupful is a cupThe recipe glosses it as half a pint. Read as American measure that is 8 fl oz (about 240 ml); read as imperial it is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml). Since it is the sauce as well as the cooking liquid, a properly thickened brown gravy will serve better than plain stock.
- Choosing kidneysLamb or veal kidneys suit this best; beef kidney is far stronger and coarser. Strip the membrane, halve them, and cut out the white core and any fat before slicing, or the filling will be chewy and bitter.
- SoakingOlder kidneys benefit from half an hour in cold salted water or milk, then a rinse and a thorough pat dry. Wet kidney waters down the gravy.
- Hollowing the onionsLarge flat Spanish onions hold their shape best. Trim the root end flat but leave it intact so the base does not fall away, then scoop from the top with a teaspoon or a melon baller, leaving two or three outer layers as a wall. Chop the scooped centers and scatter them in the gravy rather than wasting them.
- Quantity and yieldThe recipe as printed gives no number of onions or kidneys and states no yield; the surviving text begins mid-list. As a working guide, allow one large onion and about one lamb kidney per person, and add gravy or a splash of stock partway through if the pot runs dry.
- ServingLift the onions out with a spoon in each hand, as they will be very soft, and reduce the gravy briefly if it has thinned. Mashed or plainly boiled potatoes are the traditional partner.
Stuffed and braised onions belong to the frugal end of the English casserole tradition, where a small quantity of offal was made to feed a table by wrapping it in something cheap and bulky. Kidney was the classic partner for this treatment: inexpensive, strongly flavoured, and sold by every butcher, it turns up in steak-and-kidney pudding, on toast at breakfast, and in devilled dishes across the same period. Casserole cookery itself was promoted heavily in the early twentieth century as fuel-saving and labour-saving, since a single lidded pot could sit in a cooling oven or on a low burner unattended, and books devoted entirely to the method appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. The instruction to serve the dish hot in its own gravy reflects that: the pot went from heat to table with as little handling as possible.