So this past week I purchased the makings for baked ziti, chicken fajitas, and french onion soup.
Last week I made my own spaghetti sauce from scratch and it was delicious, so I knew I had sauce, and ziti noodles, and the herbs, so all I really needed was the cheese. So I thought about what I liked to eat with cheese on it, which brought me to french onion soup. So knowing I had to purchase onions for that (obviously) I thought what else do I like onions in which brought me to chicken fajitas....see how my wicked mind works - muahahaha
Anyway I found this amazing recipe online - you can find it here: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/french-onion-soup-gratinee/Detail.aspx
I adapted it to what I knew I had in my pantry and went from there.
Firstly. Onions. Lots of onions, you chop onions until you think your arms are going to fall off, then keep going.
I cut up 3 of these monsters...
...yes you are correct - that's a big freaking onion - 3 of them came out to 9 dollars, not so frugal, but hey! we're making delicious soup and sometimes sacrifices have to be made.
Next I put them in my pan, with 1/2 a stick of butter and sent them to Onion Heaven (where all onions go to be cooked to perfection then be eaten by moi) it's a sick fantasy I know.
About halfway through the process (like 20 minutes) they'll start to look like this...
...yummy!
So you keep stirring, and drinking wine (well at least that's what I do), and while that magicalness is happening on the stove, you can prepare other things on the side. 2 of my favorite ingredients to put in anything are balsamic vinegar and Worcestershire (try saying that 3 times fast, shoot just try saying it once) sauce...
...these two ingredients are essential to the soup tasting delicious, so don't skimp if you don't have - go GET!
Next I got out 6 cans of beef broth, 1 can of chick broth(neither of which are pictured) 1/2 a cup of red wine, a bay leaf, fresh thyme, and parsley (my fresh parsley got ruined in the fridge, I accidentally put a bowl on top of it and smushed it :-( oh well, dried worked just as well).
Once that's all prepared and laid out on the cutting board like an offering for a deity your onions should look like this....
...let them caramalize for like 5 more minutes, then dump everything, except the balsamic vinegar in the pan.
It'll look like this:
...put that back on the stove to simmah down now for like 20 min, then turn your broiler on and focus on your bread and cheese (I think God made bread and cheese on Day 6 and just never looked back).
At the Wegman's up here they have a phenomenal bakery. I got this amazing Asiago Cheese Italian loaf of bread ("French Onion soup with Italian bread?!" you say, well heck I'm up for a little cross-cultural dining, how bout you?) and sliced it into really thick slices and put it on a broiler pan (as pictured here):
...then while those slices were in the broiler for 2 mins on each side I got out my ramekins...
Once those pieces of bread are nice a toasty and your soup is all happily married (you sneak in the balsamic vinegar at the very end) and warmed up in the pot. Remove the herbs and spoon the soup in the ramekins, then place the bread on top, like so...
...now, the cheese. God bless the cheese, I used a combo of Swiss and Gruyere cheese (O.M.Cheese - so freaking good).
I sliced the cheese really thin and put it on top of the ramekins, then sprinkled it with paprika for some color and spice.
...then stick those puppies in the broiler. They only need like 5-7 minutes, just until you get the cheese to the consistency you want. Seeing as how I have enough soup to feed my entire building and have been eating it for the past 2 days, I have found that 6 1/2 minutes is the ideal time. It'll come out looking like this:
PERFECTION!
And that is the story of how I made the most amazing French Onion soup - I'm telling you guys, once you make your own, it's hard to think about a store/restaurant-bought soup that tastes as good.
Stay tuned to see what I make next week.....
