Skip to playerSkip to main contentSkip to footer
  • today
Here's how to make Spanish omelette by the head chef at The Salt Yard restaurant. Quick, easy and delicious!
Transcript
00:00Hi my name is Joe, I'm the head chef at Salt Yard restaurant and today I'm going
00:03to show you how to make a traditional Spanish tortilla.
00:09Traditional tortillas are made up of three ingredients, onions, potatoes and
00:14eggs. The very first step we're going to do is we're going to caramelize the
00:18onions and that's done by really thinly slicing them and cooking them over a
00:26medium heat until they are nice golden brown and caramelized. The really
00:36important thing to remember when you're caramelizing anything especially onions
00:40is they have a very high sugar content and you need to counteract that by
00:46adding and cooking salt at the beginning.
00:56The next step is to slice the potatoes. Obviously these are already peeled. I'm
01:01using jacket potatoes but you can use any kind of potato. You can use Mary's Piper,
01:05King Edward's, whatever is around at the time. I'm going to use a mandolin just for
01:09speed but you know if you can easily use a knife at home just try to cut them
01:13about two millimeters in thickness and that's what you need to do.
01:21Once you slice your potatoes it's really important to then soak them in water.
01:25What this does is it washes off all the starchy, flowery feeling you can feel
01:29around the potatoes and it leads to a nicer flavor at the end.
01:34So the first step is going to be caramelizing the onions. This is the
01:38longest process. So what we're going to do is we're going to start off by adding
01:43oil to the pan and then we're going to add the onions and cook them for about 15 to
01:5120 minutes, like I said, with salt. That is going to be cooked until they're golden brown
01:59and caramelized. So once your onions get to this stage, nice and caramelized and brown,
02:05they're ready to come off the heat and we're going to put them on the side and let
02:10them cool down while we get on with frying our potatoes.
02:16So the next step is cooking our potatoes. We're going to deep fry them on the stove.
02:21It's really important that you drain the excess water off as any excess water in the oil
02:27will spit and it will burn you. So drain them off on towel. Heat the oil in advance to 160 degrees.
02:34And once that's ready, then you put the potatoes in carefully and cook them until
02:44they're golden brown and crispy.
02:47Okay, so once your potatoes get to this stage here, golden brown and crispy, then we're ready
03:00to go. Take them out nice and carefully and drain off the oil and let them cool down.
03:11The whole reason we deep fry the potatoes is to remove the moisture from them so that
03:16when we add the eggs, they soak up more of the egg. That adds to the flavour of the tortilla.
03:21Once we get to this stage and you've got your cooled fried potatoes, caramelized onions,
03:27eggs, salt and pepper, we just need to mix it all together. So what I'm going to do first
03:31is I'm going to add the caramelized onions to the potatoes and I'm going to crack 10 eggs in.
03:48Ideally what you would want to do after you've added the eggs and mixed everything together
03:53is allow it to sit overnight. And what that does is allows the potato to soak up the eggs
03:59and make the tortilla consistency a lot firmer. So we're going to season with salt and pepper.
04:07And then get them.
04:11You want to break the potatoes and crush them up so that again, once again, they absorb the eggs and make
04:16sure it's evenly combined and incorporated. So we've left this to rest for 15 minutes or so and
04:22you can already see it's starting to firm up and some of that egg has already started to absorb into
04:26the potato. What we need to do is heat your pan and add a little oil to the base, ensure it doesn't
04:34stick. This recipe in a big pan like this would do, I reckon, two tortillas, but each one would serve
04:41two people, so this would be four people. If you were going to do them in little bellini pans,
04:45you'd probably get more along the lines of six portions, I would say. So we're going to add the mix in.
05:02You can see the idea behind it is to not give it too much of an aggressive heat because otherwise
05:07you'll put too much color around the outside of the tortilla while the inside will still be completely
05:12raw. So you want a gentle heat.
05:22Okay, the tortilla has been cooking for a few minutes on one side. It's now ready to turn. This could be fun.
05:28On this side we're going to cook it a little bit longer, but this side will need a lot less time
05:41than the first one. In a couple of minutes this is going to be ready. Tortillas ready. It's had a little rest in
05:50the pan for a couple of minutes just to allow it to warm through completely. Now it's ready to serve.
05:57I'm just going to flip it out on top of the board. Just going to garnish it with a little bit of oil.
06:06Rub that in.
06:10We have traditional Spanish tortilla.
06:13We have traditional Spanishlights
06:17in the United States.
06:18On this side, blue, we're on the future.
06:19In all of the women's