Friday, February 6, 2009

French Onion Soup-First Try

So the other day I found a blog called How To Cook Like Your Grandmother run by a guy named Drew Kime. His blog is really user friendly and there is a forum on there for people to talk about other recipes and what not...I think I will be trying a lot of his recipes and will of course blog on here about them....

I have been dying to try making french onion soup! So this past Wednesday I took a crack at it. I did bastardize Drews recipe a tiny bit. You can see his here

Mine went a little something like this:

To serve 2...

2 large onions, I used Sweet.
1/2 Tsp thyme (I didn't have fresh)
3-5 cloves garlic Minced
sea salt, to taste
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
3-4 Tbs Butter
flour, about 2 Tablespoons
1 cups wine, I used Chardonnay (Ooops at Target, $10)
16 ounces Swanson's Certified Organic beef broth
Croutons to fill top of soup bowl (I used garlic & butter flavor)
Gruyere Cheese enough to cover top
Shredded Mozzarella Just a little bit...


Peel your onions, Chop off the tip, then cut in half.















Next Dice your onions cross wise (So they make a C shape) Not to thin but not to thick...maybe a 1/4 inch wide?? Once Diced "break" them apart so they are loose















Next toss a couple Tbs. of butter into a pan that has already reached medium heat.

Mmmmmm....Butter
In go the onions!
(This is an Action shot! Woot)

Next Dice up the garlic and add along with the Thyme, salt and pepper














Give everything a good toss around the skillet so its all covered in the butter then leave it alone until you start to see some changes, the onions will get a bit translucent and start to caramelize (i.s. get brown....NOT burned however...golden) Once they start to show some brown you can stir every once in a while to let all the onions have some time at the bottom of the pan.

Once the onions get an all over golden looking color, you may notice it getting a bit 'burned' looking in the pan...You will then deglaze the pan with the cup of wine, It will smell sooo good! Now you can really get into stirring around the onions a lot more.













Mmmmm Look at them bubble in the pan!

Once the wine has cooked down a bit you can add your flour. Add a Tbs at a time making sure to stir it until all white is gone and flour is mixed in...It will get pasty














Now comes the Beef broth! DO NOT dump it all in at once. Add just a little at a time...Constantly stirring. You will see how the flour will make the paste grow a bit before it finally gets soup like.

Let it simmer 10-15 minutes, Then into the ramekins they go! I used 16oz. ramekins. Top the soup with croutons, I liked using croutons vs. a slices of toasted french bread because this way when you dig in you get a bunch of little bite sized nuggets of goodness vs the typical bust through the cheese and then the toast slaps up and makes a mess and is hard to get a good bite of...

You don't neeeed to use this many croutons...I'm just a glutton when it comes to carbs...you really just need enough to keep the cheese afloat, that is pretty much the main purpose of the croutons, to act as a cheese life raft :)

Next up is the cheese! Now...the recipe calls for Gruyere, Which is very expensive. For 1 pound it is $17.00, so just buy the smallest bit you can find. If your not willing to break the bank on this cheese (which I HIGHLY suggest you do, it makes a world of difference) You can use some Swiss and provolone together...












Now comes the part I botched up a tiny bit, I've never used a broiler before on an oven..so I was clueless to how fast it really cooks. Put your ramekins O' goodness onto a cookie sheet or whatever will fit down in your broiler. And keep a close eye on them...we have a gas stove, so I don't know if it made a difference, but I SWEAR I put them in for about 3 minutes, and when I looked in on them, one was a tiny bit on ...ummm...fire...EEEEEP! You just want the cheese to melt a bit and brown...

Once I pulled them out, I topped them with a bit of shredded Mozzarella cheese and put them in the regular oven at 250 for about 2-3 minutes, just enough to melt the cheese.

Yes the one in the back is the burn unit victim :( wahwahThe soup was amazing! The cheese was super stringy and fun to eat! The little croutons were nuggets of joy! I will FOR SURE be making this again, sans fire.***Caution the cheese holds in A LOT of heat...beware, you will cuss like no other if not eaten with caution.

3 comments:

  1. Oh man, I'm sorry I didn't warn you more clearly about that. I once set some asparagus on fire. Well, actually it was the olive oil that caught fire, but close enough.

    I just went back and added a link to your cautionary tale.

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  2. Mmmm sounds delish! Too bad the hubs would never eat a soup full of onions. :( I'll have to try it out maybe once he goes out of town for work next.

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  3. Thank you for posting this site. What a great find!

    The soup looked fantastic. Great job. I just hate onions, but it looked great!

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