French Onion Pasta
A variation on the diner/family restaurant classic is a little more involved than your average weeknight recipe, mainly because you need to put in the time to caramelize onions. But, the effort will be rewarded with the satisfaction that only a cheesy, beefy soup can bring. Plus, who doesn’t love pasta?
This recipe is great practice for learning how acidity can be used to elevate flavors. Like salt, acid has a way of elevating other flavors and helps bring a sense of balance to any plate. Often, when you’re tasting for seasoning and get the sense a dish is missing something, what it’s missing is a pop of acid. This is the real reason french cuisine makes such liberal use of wine in their cooking because it elevates the richness of things like butter and beef and starch.
INGREDIENTS:
Sweet Onions
Spaghetti
Thinly sliced beef
Garlic
Beef stock
White wine
Butter
Parsley
Pepper
Pecorino Romano
Melty Cheese
Baguette
Notes:
On the pasta: I won’t stop you from using whatever kind of pasta you like but, for me, this recipe works best with a long noodle like spaghetti or fettuccine. The reason is that the long and thin caramelized onions will love to grab onto those long noodles. However, nothing is stopping you from using a pasta of your choice.
On the wine: A dry and acidic white is best in this recipe. You want something that’s not too sweet to properly balance out the sweet jammy onions and the rich beef. I used sauvignon blanc in this recipe but a pinot gris or a Cortese will also work.
Preparation:
For the caramelized onions
Halve the onions and then slice. I like to slice my onions against the shape of the onion (the knife going vertically from root to stem) for more even slices.
Lightly oil a pan with plenty of space for everyone and drop the onions in with some salt and a spoonful of sugar
For proper caramelization to happen, you need to keep the pan at low heat for a while – at least a half hour if not an entire hour. Keep the onions moving to help encourage their natural sugars to come out
If you’re in a rush, add a little bit of baking soda to your onions. This changes the pH balance of the onions and speeds up the Maillard reaction that brings out all those natural sugars. They’ll look a funny color and may retain less of their shape but it will speed up the process.
You can do this part of the recipe ahead of time and just keep the caramelized onions in an airtight container in the fridge until you need them
Cooking:
For the pasta
Bring a pot of water to a boil for the pasta. Either you can add a little bit of carton beef stock to the water or a teaspoon or two of a stock paste (like Better than Bouillon). We want to slightly flavor the water with beef stock, not completely boil the noodles in stock.
Once your water is at a boil drop in the pasta (about 125 grams of pasta per serving is a good portion)
For the sauce
To your caramelized onions add minced or sliced garlic and let them cook until they just start to brown around the edges
Deglaze the pan with white wine and turn to low heat to let the alcohol cook off.
Once most of the wine is cooked off, add a few spoonfuls of the pasta cooking liquid – this starchy, beefy water will help cohere our sauce
Just before you’re ready to toss the pasta in the sauce, we’re going to “mount” the sauce with butter
Add in a tablespoon or two of butter, chopped into cubes (alternatively, follow your heart and use as much as you want)
Gently whisk it into the sauce, keeping the heat low so the sauce doesn’t break
Add pecorino romano and plenty of black pepper. Make sure to give it a final taste for seasoning and add more salt or a pinch of lemon juice if it needs it. Finish with chopped parsley
For the crostini
Slice a baguette (or any crusty, airy bread) on the bias and butter both sides
Slice a melty, fatty cheese of your choice (gruyere if you want to keep things french)
Heat a nonstick pan on medium heat and gently toast the bread on both sides and remove
Place your sliced cheese directly on the ungreased nonstick pan
This sounds crazy but I promise it will work, the cheese has enough fat to keep it from sticking
Once the cheese starts bubbling place one of your bread slices on top of it. The cheese should remove cleanly and be attached to the bread
For the beef
Once the pasta is done cooking, keep your pasta cooking liquid hot on the stove
Take thin slices of shaved beef and, using tongs, dips them into the hot broth for about three seconds
Serving Suggestions
Toss the pasta with the sauce in the pan making sure those caramelized onions snake their way around the strands of pasta and the sauce coats every bit. Nothing left to do but twirl into a bowl with an extra crack of pepper, some chopped parsley, a little more cheese, our slices of beef, and our cheesy crostini.
A light and crisp salad will not go amiss here as an accompaniment to the rich, beefy noodles and sauce.