Ingredients:
4 onions
about 6 chinese-soup containers' worth of stock
almost 1 stick of butter
fresh thyme
some chardonnay that's been tucked in the back of the fridge forever
sherry
salt
soy sauce
pepper
(really, that's it?! that's all i need? oh wait, i forgot the piece de resistance....)
baguette (though all they had was an italian with sesame seeds, ah well)
swiss cheese (most recipes seemed to call for gruyere, but close enough. i had some leftover from making artichoke dip for a super bowl party.)
Directions:
peel, slice onions. heat butter in pan (cast iron was perfect for this job!!) on high (electric stove, boo.) add onions, stir around for a bit (~5 min, then it was time to walk the dog to meet the man at the train station). Turn on low (so as not to burn the house down in my absence).
Got the baguette and a bottle of red (crucial to my state of mind, opened as soon as we returned!)
onions looked fine, so i "deglazed" (i'm guessing, that's what some recipes called for--i just dumped some white wine in) the onions with the wine. This is where i added the fresh thyme--i love my barrels in the backyard, that stuff lives all winter long!
Turned the heat back up, moved all the onions into a bigger pot, and added all the stock. (in retrospect, good thing i had so much stock! 4 onions is a LOT!)
While it was heating, I cut some thick slices of "baguette" and put them in the oven @ 350 on a pan, wrapped the rest of the bread in foil & threw that in too. Also grated the Swiss at this point, too.
Brought it all to a boil (probably effectively killing any nutritional value of the onions/stock, but all in the name of flavor), but only for a moment.
then added salt (all in all, about 1 Tb salt and 2-3 Tb soy sauce, to taste) and pepper. It was still missing that tangy bite, and luckily the sherry did it!
By now the bread slices were just a bit browned, took them out, (and the loaf) spooned the soup into a bowl, threw some cheese in, floated the bread (2 slices per bowl) and added more cheese, and put in the oven on broil. (Also in retrospect, next time i will cut the bread up into more crouton-y sizes, it was kinda hard to cut it into bites sized pieces in the steaming hot bowls!)
After about 2 min it looked ready!
Boy was it yummy! The man had had some reservations about this alone for dinner ("umm, isn't it kindof , brothy?") but we were both nicely full!
And, I totally felt like I was reincarnating nights that my friends across the street who now live in Chile made french onion soup. Awww...
8 comments:
Oh... baguette... hohn hohn hohn...
Foo de fa fa, etc...
That's basically how I make my french onion soup, good job! I also like to use sherry and chicken stock. I've never heard of using soy though, how did that work out?
mmmmmmm... onion soup.
awwww.. I just read the last part, my sammy.
I ordered onion soup here in Chile not that long ago, eewww, so bland and a clear almost thick broth, served with crackers.. never again.
I find blogs slightly hard to navigate in, how do I post a recipe for you?
jwer--haha! that song was in my head as soon as i wrote "baguette"
mill--soy was great! b doubted me at first, but i think it adds a richer flavor than just salt.
too bad chilean food blows. or some of it anyway!
not sure how, i guess i thought that you could write a recipe in the comment box?
Let me tell you, it was delicious!
try using red wine next time to deglaze. since french onion is ustally made with beef broth it might give you more of that body you were looking for. hmmmm...would john say the same?
I second the yumminess. Or, I guess, third it. Could've used more cheese, though... (ducks)
No jwer, the inclusion of ducks would almost certainly create "french onion duck soup", and we ALL know the dangers of THAT...
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