Stuffed Onions With Couscous
It’s not often that I’m surprised by my own cooking. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. I generally know whether something has a good chance of succeeding (or if I’m running the risk of failure) and where it will rate on the deliciousness scale (or the healthiness and/or easiness scale, as the case may be). But these onions stuffed with ground beef and pork and served over couscous really surprised me. I wasn’t expecting them to be as good as they were.
B, being Korean, is used to having rice at every meal. I, being American (despite my 7 years in Korea), still am not. I am okay with having a rice-like component, but just plain white rice is not something I’m down for more than once or twice a week. Actually, if I had my way, it would be brown rice or the highway, even in typical white rice situations, like with Korean food. But that’s beside the point. The point is, I’m always looking for a way to sneak in another grain.
Couscous is one of my favorite, but a lot of the things that go well with it need to be cooked for a really long time. I wasn’t sure these stuffed onions would provide enough flavor, but, as I said, I was pleasantly surprised.
A lot of people include rice in their onion stuffing, but that just seemed like a recipe for pasty, dry results to me. Instead, I went the other way and basted the onions in butter as they cooked to keep them from drying out and to allow for a little caramelization on the onions. The butter mingled with the stuffing and spices and added just enough moisture and flavor to keep the couscous from being stodgy.
When I got to the end of the onions and realized I still had a ton of stuffing left, I just shaped them into patties and cooked them off in the frying pan to make an extremely bastardized version of ddeokgalbi that B happily gobbled up at breakfast and lunch — that’s three meals in a row. (Don’t worry — I adjusted the recipe below to account of the extra stuffing, but I do recommend trying this mixture for meatballs or patties sometime. I have a feeling B is going to be requesting them done that way again in the near future.)
The best part is, I had originally planned on stuffing the onions with Italian sausage I bought at the foreign mart. When I opened them on the day, it was clear something funky was going on, so I threw them out. I had already gutted the onions and was stuck until I remembered I had ground beef and pork in the freezer, so I improvised. Luckily, thanks to this blog, I’ve started actually recording what I do in the kitchen, so I have the recipe for the future.
Stuffed Onions With Couscous
Ingredients
- 12 large yellow or white onions
- 200 grams ground beef
- 170 grams ground pork
- 1/2 cup minced onion (from the onion cores)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2 teaspoons garlic, minced
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/2 cup fresh parsley, roughly chopped
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup breadcrumbs
- 8 tablespoons butter (1 stick)
Couscous
- 2 cups instant couscous
- 2 cups water
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (204 C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil.
- Cut off both ends of the onions and remove the skins. Cut one end of the onion until it just sits flat and cut the other wide enough for a spoon to fit inside. Run the knife around the center of the onion through the wide end to loosen and remove the core. Use a spoon to loosen and scoop out the remaining layers, leaving behind only the outer one or two layers. Mince the cored part of the onion to add to the stuffing.
- Melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium heat in a frying pan. Add the meat, 1/2 cup of minced onion, garlic and spices and cook until the meat is just barely browned. Drain off the grease and put the meat in a large bowl to cool.
- Once the meat has cooled to a comfortable temperature for touching, add the egg, parsley and breadcrumbs to the bowl and work through with your hands. Spoon the stuffing into the onions and top each onion with a small pad of butter, reserving at least 3 tablespoons to melt for basting. Place the onions on the lined baking sheet.
- Put the onions in the oven and allow them to cook for 15 minutes. Melt the reserved butter in the microwave. When the 15 minutes is up, remove the onions from the oven and use a basting brush to brush the tops and outsides of the onions with the melted butter. Return the onions to the oven and allow them to cook for another 15 minutes or until they begin to brown.
- While the onions are finishing in the oven, boil the water for the couscous. Add the salt and couscous after the water has reached a boil and remove the pot from the heat. Use a fork to stir the couscous into the water, cover and allow to sit for 10 minutes.
- Remove the onions from the oven and allow them cool for 5 minutes. Uncover the couscous and fluff with a fork. Serve the onions on top of the couscous while they are still warm.
