Grilled Spring Onions & Asparagus with Lime

Sometimes the best cooking is barely cooking at all. Asparagus and spring onions brushed with oil, charred on the grill, then hit with a squeeze of fresh lime and a pinch of coarse sea salt. That’s it. Five ingredients, no sauce, no fuss.

The grill does all the transforming. Spring onions go from sharp and pungent to sweet and silky inside their charred skins. Asparagus gets that smoky, slightly blistered exterior with a snappy, bright center. The contrast between the charred outside and the tender inside is the whole point of this dish.

Lime instead of lemon is a deliberate choice. Lime has a sharper, more floral acidity that stands up to the smoky char better than lemon does. Squeeze it on right when the vegetables come off the grill so the juice sizzles into the hot surface.

Pro Tips

• Use large spring onions (sometimes called green garlic or fat scallions at farmers markets). Thin scallions fall through the grill grates and burn too fast.
• Grill the asparagus perpendicular to the grates so they don’t slip through. If your spears are thin, use a grill basket.
• Coarse sea salt, not fine table salt. The flaky crystals add a crunch and burst of salinity with each bite that fine salt can’t replicate.
• Serve immediately. These lose their magic as they cool. The char softens, the lime fades, and the texture goes limp.