French Onion Soup is great, but Spanish Onion Soup is even better.
Just like the French version, this soup starts with caramelized onions, but then you add
the garlic, saffron, and tomatoes, which give this soup beautiful brightness.
And instead of serving it with gooey cheese, you serve it with a poached egg.
About the name, I have no idea if this soup exists in Spain.
But the combination of ingredients felt Spanish to me, so that’s what I called it.
The best onion type for caramelizing are yellow onions.
I know that intuitively, you want to use sweet onions, vidalia onions, or some other interesting
onions.
Well, don’t!
The humble yellow onion produces the best texture and flavor.
I have about one and a half pounds of yellow onions here.
Let’s cut off the top and the root.
Make sure to take at least half an inch off on both ends.
Otherwise your strips won’t separate.
Cut the onions in half pole to pole and peel all the halves.
Make sure you remove the first good layer.
It’s never that good, there are always dried up spots.
We’ll be slicing the onions pole to pole.
That’s important for the right texture and even cooking.
Start at an angle to follow the shape of the onion.
This will give you even strips.
Gradually straighten your knife out and continue slicing at 90 degrees to the board.
When the onion gets skinny, tip it forward and finish slicing at 90 degrees to the board.
If you want caramelized rather than wilted onions, you need a stainless steel skillet.
This will give you plenty of sticky brown bits resulting in deliciously jammy consistency.
For 1 and a half pounds of onions, I’ll need a 10 inch skillet.
Set it over medium-high heat and add 4 Tbsp of olive oil.
I goofed and added about 2 Tbsp, but I’ll add more later.
When the oil starts to shimmer add the onions, and a generous pinch of salt.
Once I saw my pile of onions, I realized how much oil I actually needed, so now we are
up to roughly 4 to 5 tablespoons.
Mix to integrate the salt and then leave your onions alone until they brown on the bottom.
If you keep stirring, they won’t brown.
Periodically, check whichever part of your pan usually heats the fastest.
On a gas stove, it’s often the outside, and on electric, it’s the inside of the
pan.
But this is just a suggestion.
All stoves are different.
No color yet, so let’s wait another minute.
Here we go.
We’ve been cooking them for about 3 minutes and they are finally ready to stir.
We’ll continue cooking over moderately-high heat without disturbing them until the bottom
browns again.
As they continue to cook, browning will happen faster and faster, so you need to stir more
frequently and possibly lower the heat slightly.
Here we go, we’ve got color again.
If the bottom of the pan ever looks dry, add more oil and if the onions or the brown bits
are turning black instead of brown, lower the heat just a bit.
I repeat this “stir-and-leave-alone” procedure roughly 7 times over the course of roughly
15 to 20 minutes, but all pans are different and all stoves are different, so your mileage
will vary.
I think we have plenty of color now and it’s time to turn our heat down to very low.
On an electric stove, you might want to move to another burner.
It takes the skillet a couple of minutes to drop in temperature.
So at first, you might want to stir the onions a good bit, but once the skillet cools off,
they’ll be fine for 5 to 8 minute periods without any attention.
Once we are on low heat, the onion juices won’t be evaporating that fast and will
start to pick up the brown bits.
That’s where the magic happens and they transform from onion strips into a syrupy
onion jam.
While our onions are cooking, let’s slice 4 garlic cloves very thinly, or you could
use a garlic press.
Add the garlic to the onions.
Give it a pinch of salt.
Stir everything together and let it cook for about 5 minutes.
We want the garlic to soften and release its aroma.
At this point my onions have been on low heat for about 15 minutes and they are done.
See how the color has evened out.
I like to shove them all to one side, press on them gently, tilt the pan, and scoop out
some excess oil.
We needed a ton of oil to produce really great caramelized onions, but leaving all this oil
in will result in a somewhat greasy soup and that’s not what I want.
This oil is delicious.
I won’t throw it away.
I’ll put it in my fridge and will add it to whatever I am cooking this week.
You don’t need to squeeze every last bit of oil here.
You just don’t want a puddle of it.
Let’s add a splash of balsamic vinegar and give it a stir.
Add a 1/4 cup of dry white wine and a pinch of crumbled saffron threads.
If you don’t want to use saffron, don’t worry about it.
It will still be a great soup.
Add a can of drained whole tomatoes.
I drain them in a colander and save the juice for some other use.
This way my onions and tomatoes will be on equal footing.
Otherwise, my soup might become very tomatoey.
Not that that’s a bad thing.
But that’s not what I am going for today.
Break up your tomatoes with a spoon into bite size pieces.
Tie up some thyme sprigs with a kitchen twine and add them to the pan along with a bay leaf.
These aromatics are optional, so if you don’t have them, don’t worry about it.
Add 2 and a half cups of stock.
I am using homemade brown chicken stock.
The link for it is below.
If you want to keep the soup vegetarian, cook some dry white beans and use their cooking
liquid instead of stock.
The link for how to cook dry beans is below as well.
Basically, the links for solving all of your life’s problems are in the description below.
If you are going the bean route, you might as well add the beans to this soup as well.
It will be a fabulous vegan soup.
Taste and adjust for salt, but don’t salt all the way just yet in case the soup reduces
during simmer.
Let’s give our soup 15 minutes of very gentle simmer while we make the toast and the eggs.
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Pour a couple of tablespoons of olive oil on a baking sheet (ideally, I would use the
oil I scooped out of caramelized onions), but I had to film the toast before the onions,
so I didn’t have it yet.
Coat a couple of pieces of good bread with this oil on both sides.
Place in the oven until crisp and brown.
This will take about 12 to 14 minutes.
Bread burns easily, so keep a close eye on it.
Here we go -- nice and crisp.
Dunk a garlic clove into salt and rub all over the toasts.
I think garlic toast is the best accompaniment to any soup.
Then chop up the toasts into bite size pieces.
Poached eggs is a huge topic that I have covered in many videos.
It’s another one of those links below.
I know that some people poach the eggs right in the soup.
Yes, it saves you a pan, but I don’t do that because it makes the egg doneness completely
unpredictable.
When my eggs are done, I want to remove them from the water so that they don’t overcook.
If you cook them in the soup, and then ladle them right into bowls with that hot soup,
they end up overcooking by the time you eat and you risk breaking them while pouring the
soup into bowls.
Our soup is done.
Let’s remove the thyme and taste it.
Mine needs some salt.
I’ll also add some black pepper for aroma.
If your soup is not fantastic, you probably need more salt.
If you are worried about oversalting, experiment on a small portion.
I know French onion soup gets all the glory, but this one is so much brighter.
It’s the kind of soup that is made for cold weather, but makes you think of warm and sunny
places.
I like to garnish it with some chopped parsley, a little Maldon sea salt
And a drizzle of olive oil.
This dish is all about components and you can mix and match them as you please.
For example, you could skip the stock entirely.
Pile the tomato onion mixture on top of toast, top with a poached egg and it’s an amazing
brunch dish.
Or you could skip the egg and add some protein in the form of beans.
Don’t be afraid to improvise and let me know in the comments about your version.
Here are more very detailed culinary tutorials for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.