Tortilla Española
with lemony arugula salad
This Spanish Tortilla is made with just 3 simple ingredients (eggs, onions, and potatoes) and that makes it a staple at nearly every Spanish restaurant. The only challenge to the recipe is to cook the potatoes together in a skillet until they are nice and tender but still hold their shape. We previously featured a Spanish tortilla way back in 2014 alongside another classic Spanish dish - pan con tomate.
Smarts: You'll need a good amount of hot oil in the pan to help cook the potatoes, but any excess can be drained off before you finish the dish.
Ingredients
- Onions, medium - 1, thinly sliced
- Potatoes, Russet - 1 lb, ⅛” / .3 cm slices; using a mandolin if possible
- Oil, cooking - 1/2 cup
- Eggs - 8
- Salt - 1/2 tsp
- Black pepper - 1/4 tsp
- Vinegar, balsamic - 1 Tbsp
- Lemon juice - 2 tsp
- Honey - 1/2 tsp
- Oil, olive - 2 Tbsp
- Tomatoes, cherry or grape - 1 cup, halved
- Olives, preferably Spanish green and sliced - 1/4 cup, drained
- Arugula - 6 oz
Nutrition Facts
Prep
- Onions - Thinly slice onions. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- Make vinaigrette - Whisk together vinegar, lemon juice, and honey. Add olive oil while whisking. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- Tomatoes - Halve tomatoes. (Can be done 1 day ahead)
- Olives - Drain.
- Potatoes - Peel potatoes and then slice into ⅛” / .3 cm slices. A mandolin is great for this if you have one.
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Make
- Heat an 10.5” to 12” (26 cm to 30 cm) oven-safe skillet over medium heat (skillet size is for 4 servings; adjust if customizing). Add cooking oil. When oil begins to shimmer, add onions with a generous sprinkle of salt. Saute onions until they begin to soften, 2 to 3 minutes.
- Add in potato slices and saute, gently stirring them around in the pan every few minutes to insure they cook evenly, until very tender but not losing their shape, 15 to 20 minutes.
- While potatoes are cooking, in a medium mixing bowl whisk together eggs, salt, and pepper. Set aside.
- When potatoes are done cooking, use a slotted spoon to transfer onions and potatoes to egg mixture. If there is a lot of oil leftover in the pan, you can drain most of it out. There should be a thin layer of oil remaining.
- Gently stir together eggs and potatoes and then pour them back into the heated skillet. As the sides of the tortilla begin to set, use a spatula to gently pull the edges towards the middle so that any uncooked egg can drip down the sides. Cook until the eggs are mostly set, 8 to 10 minutes.
- While the eggs are cooking, turn on the oven’s broiler and position top rack so it’s about 6” / 15 cm from the heat source.
- Transfer tortilla to oven and broil for ~2 minutes to set the top.
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Run a spatula around the side and under the tortilla. Place a cutting board or large plate over the skillet and then flip to remove tortilla from the pan.
- Toss arugula, tomatoes, and olives with vinaigrette.
- Slice tortilla into wedges. Season salad and tortilla with some salt and pepper. Serve tortilla with salad on the side. Enjoy!
Nutrition Facts
Reviews
Ratings
Most Helpful
This is tasty and reminded me of study abroad in Spain! Downsides: the onions started to stick to the pan and then I ended up burning a crust on the bottom (still edible, but less than ideal and didn't turn out of the pan easily as a result).
1 Helpful25 reviews
Sorry but this is not worth the effort. Chopping the potatoes was a hassle, the onions burned before the potatoes were tender, and the whole thing stuck to the pan so much it took me half an hour to clean just the pan. Also, flipping the skillet at the end nearly broke my wrist. The end result would have had to be amazing for me to rate it highly and it simply wasn't.
0 HelpfulThis was delicious! Based on some the comments, I did the onions first and took them out before doing the potatoes, which worked well. We served with some tzaziki left over from another cook smarts meal, which was random but a pretty good combo.
0 HelpfulTasty. After reading other reviews, I put the onions and potatoes in at the same time. Unfortunately, they stuck to the bottom of the pan and I ended up burning the tortilla. I probably didn't add enough oil to begin with. Next time I may use a nonstick skillet to cook the onions and potatoes and then put egg and potato mixture in an oven-safe skillet.
0 HelpfulMy kids loved this. I would make again for sure, but add more herbs & garlic at the end of potato cooking.
0 HelpfulI love tortilla and broiling definitely makes it easier than flipping but it’s still a fussy dish.
0 HelpfulLike others said, this was really labor intensive and though CS recipes are usually foolproof for cooking newbies like me, this one was not. Through a series of mistakes, I ended up with a barely edible result. 1) I didn't add enough oil (I don't normally cook with that much oil and added far too little), 2) I didn't stir the egg and potato mixture well enough together, 3) I didn't cook the eggs long enough. All that resulted in a mess when I flipped the pan over with half of it stuck to the pan.
0 Helpful