Hrous

The onions are salt-pickled for weeks first, so this is a ferment and a preserve rather than a fresh paste.

Vegan.

Ingredients

the salted onions

• 1 kg onions, finely chopped
• 200 g coarse salt

the paste

• 400 g dried red chilli powder, coarse
• 2 tablespoons caraway seeds, ground
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, ground
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• olive oil, to cover

Method

1. THE ONIONS ARE SALT-PICKLED FOR WEEKS FIRST, so this is a ferment and a preserve rather than a fresh paste. A kilo of finely chopped onions is layered with two hundred grams of coarse salt and left in a covered crock for three to four weeks, pressed down, until they have given up their water, gone translucent and soured. That brine and those fermented onions are then worked with an equal weight of dried chilli powder into a stiff dark paste. The result is deep, sour, salty and only secondarily hot -- quite unlike the fresh roasted-pepper paste on its own page here, which is bright and sharp. The two look similar in a jar and taste nothing alike, and neither substitutes for the other.
2. IT IS DRIED CHILLI POWDER, NOT FRESH PEPPERS. Four hundred grams of coarse powder, roughly equal to the drained onion. Fresh peppers bring water, and water in a preserve kept at room temperature for months is how it spoils.
3. THE SALT IS TWENTY PER CENT OF THE ONION WEIGHT AND IS NOT REDUCIBLE. Two hundred grams to a kilo. It is what drives the fermentation in the right direction and what keeps the finished paste safe at room temperature. An under-salted crock goes mouldy rather than sour, and a mouldy batch is thrown away rather than scraped.
4. THE ONIONS ARE PRESSED UNDER THEIR OWN BRINE THROUGHOUT. A plate and a weight, so nothing sits above the liquid. This is the same rule as any brine ferment and the failure is the same: anything exposed to air grows the wrong things.
5. THE DRAINED BRINE GOES INTO THE PASTE, NOT DOWN THE SINK. It carries most of the sourness. The onions are drained but the liquid is kept and added back a little at a time until the paste is stiff but workable.
6. IT IS MATURED A FURTHER MONTH AFTER MIXING. Jarred under oil and left. The chilli powder hydrates on the brine and the flavours settle from raw and harsh into something rounded. Used the day it is mixed it tastes of raw chilli dust.
7. IT IS KEPT UNDER OIL AND IT LASTS A YEAR. Pressed down hard in the jar, a centimetre of oil over it, topped up after use. This is a winter store rather than a weekly condiment.
8. The onions chopped FINE and layered with the coarse salt in a crock.
9. A plate and a WEIGHT set on top so everything stays under the brine that forms.
10. Left covered at room temperature 3 to 4 WEEKS, until translucent and clearly SOURED.
11. Any batch that smells mouldy rather than sour THROWN AWAY.
12. The onions DRAINED and the BRINE KEPT.
13. The chilli powder, ground caraway, coriander, cinnamon and cloves worked into the onions, with the reserved brine added A LITTLE AT A TIME to a STIFF paste.
14. Packed into sterilised jars, PRESSED DOWN hard, and covered with 1 cm of olive oil.
15. MATURED a further 1 MONTH before use.
16. TESTED: it should taste sour and salty first and hot second. Raw chilli dust on the tongue means it has not matured.
17. Keeps a year under oil. A DRY spoon every time.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Tunisia · All recipes