I’m sure you’re wondering what the heck are Calcots- I was wondering the same thing when I first heard the word. But, to simply put it, they a type of green onion specially grown in the Spanish region of Catalunya. They harvest at the end of winter and give the people a reason come together and enjoy their deliciousness. My team here in Spain recently decided to plan a bbq so that we could have the calçot experience and it was definitely something I enjoyed and want to do again.
To prepare the calçots, our team managers bbq’d them on the grill- which took a while because we probably had about 20 each- and then they were wrapped in newspapers. The onions tend to get super messy while eating them so the newspapers are used to make it easy to clean up the mess. I was told that people usually wear bibs too, but we didn’t do that this time.
To get to the good part of the onion you have to tug, then slide the bottom layer off. Yes, sounds difficult, but one of my teammates gave us a tutorial, and it sounds a lot tougher than it actually is. Once you get to the edible part of the calçot, you dip it in a special orange sauce. It’s made of almonds and peppers and is a perfect accent to the onion that is surprisingly sweet.
Part of the calçot bbq tradition is to then bbq different types of meat, and again, our team managers did a great job preparing bbq chicken, steak and other type of meat to add to the onions.
Not only do the calçots taste very good, having the full experience was really fun and I’m glad our team decided to bring us together for it!
Overseas: Uncut 