My Teta's Stuffed Onions

By Ben Diwan

"The most important thing when cooking this recipe, like any other, is patience and flexibility."

Lebanese Jews, some fun facts:

My family’s heritage on my dad’s side comes from one of the smaller but oldest Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the Lebanese Jewish community. While there are accounts of Jews living in Lebanon during biblical times, the Lebanese Jewish community at its height included less than 20,000 individuals. However, most “modern” Lebanese Jews are not descendants of the core Jews who settled in Lebanon in biblical times but are descendants of Jews from the Spanish Exile and others seeking refuge from MENA country’s Dhimmi status (Mostly from Iraq and Syria). During Ottoman rule (roughly 12 century to the early 20th century), Lebanon was known for being tolerant of minorities. Hence, Christians, Druze, and Marionettes held a relatively large presence compared to the general Muslim population. Therefore, the Lebanese Jewish community is the only MENA Jewish community that became larger after Israel’s establishment in 1948. Jews only began to leave Lebanon in the 1960's to the early 1980’s with the increased hostile Pan-Arab nationalism spilling over from Syria and later the Syrian occupation and Lebanese civil wars. Unlike their counterpart Jewish MENA communities who fled to Israel in the tens and hundreds of thousands, most Lebanese Jews fled to Brazil, Canada, France, and the U.S.

Now, why are you telling us all of this, let’s get to the food:

Lebanon’s story and the story of Lebanese Jews’ roots, like any other people, are expressed in their cuisine. Our food has a strong classical Levantine and Ottoman base to it, found in dishes like hummus, tabouli, and shish-taouk (also known as souvlaki, kebab, or whatever you want to call meat on a stick), but it is also influenced by the layers of immigrants who made it to Lebanon from across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, such as Kubah (or as we call it Kibbeh) that came from Iraq. However, ask any Lebanese Jew and they will tell you that the unofficial staple of our cuisine is stuffed vegetables. I don’t know what it is, why we like putting things inside things and then letting them cook for hours, but that’s what we do. Give a Lebanese grandma any vegetable, and she’ll figure out a way to stuff it. The crown jewel of stuffed vegetables in my family are my grandma’s (Teta’s) stuffed onions. These onions are present in every bris, holiday, birthday, bar mitzvah, wedding, and funeral. These onions are so central to our lives that my grandmother had to smuggle them across the border from Canada into the U.S. for family events on several occasions.

Now to the recipe:

This recipe is one that I cultivated from watching and listening to my grandmother make them. If you have a Mizrachi grandparent or parent that you’re trying to learn to cook from, you probably know that there is no actual recipe for anything, there are no quantities, and your experience asking what goes into a dish is usually answered by “a little bit of this, a little bit of that.” When you ask about quantities, you’re met with “as much that seems right,” or “until the dish turns into this color,” or the worst “until it smells the way it’s supposed to smell,” or the devastating “until it sounds right.” Learning to cook from a family elder requires you to use all senses. Luckily for you, I was able to translate all of this ambiguity into an actual recipe. The most important thing when cooking this recipe, like any other, is patience and flexibility.

What you’ll need:

5 large onions, peeled, whole, with a single cut through all the layers until the middle core on one side

1 lb of ground beef, chicken, or turkey (for veg, substitute with 1.5 lbs of chopped and sauteed mushrooms)

1.5 cups of rice

6 garlic cloves, peeled and grated or crushed

1 tbsp baharat spice mix (or alternatively, 1 tsp of cumin, 1 tsp of cinnamon, 1 tsp of ground cloves, 1 tsp of ground cardamom).

2 tbsp of brown sugar

2 cups of chicken stock, veg stock, or water

How you’ll make it:

1. Put the onions in a pot of water and let boil, once it boils let simmer for about 10 min and turn off the heat, and let sit for another 10 min.

2. Pour the onions into a strainer, and let sit under cold water until you’re able to handle them.

3. Separate the onion layers. The layers in the middle of the onion are too small to stuff (meaning they can’t be rolled over themselves), so chop them up.

4. Then, mix the meat, rice, Bharat, garlic, chopped onion centers, salt, and pepper.

5. Take an onion layer, and put about a heaping spoonful of the mixture at the end of the layer, and roll it up (some of the larger layers will give you two stuffed onions) and when rolling make sure not to roll them too tight because the rice will expand. Place in a shallow pot with the seam side of the stuffed onion facing down. Do this with all the onions until out of onions or mixture.

6. Put the pot with the onions on the stove on low-medium heat for about 20 min, then sprinkle the brown sugar on top, and cover the onions with stock or water until the onions are only slightly covered, bring to a boil and in the meanwhile preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

7. Cover the pot with the onions and place in the oven for at least two hours and a maximum 4 hours. When you’re about to take the onions out the oven, uncover them and set them under the broiler for roughly 5 min, or until they have a pretty golden brown look to them like in the picture.