Wednesday, February 13, 2013

French Onion Soup - Worth the Stink

Now that I'm working part time from home I cook a lot. I truly enjoy finding yummy recipes (even if I have to fudge with them a bit). By far my favorite food-type to make is soup. I could eat soup every day, but Linda's not as big a fan as I am, so I limit myself to one to two days a week. I've made everything from chicken noodle to chili to cream of mushroom soups. One recipe I've been avoiding is French onion.

We're all big fans of French onion soup, but I've read the recipes - hours of cooking time and pounds of sliced onions. I wasn't sure my eyes could handle that kind of torture. I wanted to thank Linda for her patience with my obsession though, so I borrowed her Taste of Home magazine and took on their Classic French Onion Soup recipe.

As suspected, the recipe starts with lots of onions. Linda helped for about four onions, but then she split. I stuck it out, breaking when my eyes blurred. Unwilling to handle the smelly roots for longer than necessary, I plugged in my food processor and made some noise (note: when slicing onions in the food processor make sure you first remove the chopping blade).

A beautiful pot of stinky. I had to brown the onions, which took nearly and hour. It was worth the wait.

Tasty! Add a little wine, some beef broth and let it cook. I ended up with too many onions, but no one minded. With flavor that intense, more onions just add more tender wonderfulness.

I don't own ramekins, so I used my everyday cereal bowls. Sure, it's only half full, but that giant vessel holds two toasted pieces of baguette, two ladles full of soup, and the gooey, melty cheese.
It took roughly 2.5 hours to make this soup. My house reeked of onions for almost two days. Was it worth it?
You betcha!