Culinary Disasters

A well crafted bowl of French onion soup is a beautiful thing and definately a dish that requires patience.  Most people fail on two problems.  One is the slicing of the onions.  I have found the best way to prepare this dish is to go with the grain of the onion versus thin slices.  The second is with heat control and that the onions are cooked over medium or even (gasp) high heat for short periods of time.  Onions are delicate and should be treated delicately and be allowed to break down and carmelize over low heat for hours on end.

For this dish you are going to need:

• 6 onions (I used 3 vidala and 3 white onions)
• 4 tb of unsalted butter
• 6 cups of beef broth (please please make your own it is so easy to do but if not atleast buy high quality beef stock)
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 sprigs of thyme
• handful of whole peppercorns
• crusty style brea
• Emmentelar or gruyere cheese
• tb of sherry  
• tb of veal demi glace (optional but adds to the complexity of the stock)
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt and pepper

The first thing is to cut the onions in half and remove the tough center core.

Next keeping the onion cut side down you will notice the grain.  Cut the onion along this grain to leave a leave a small sliver. 

Repeat this cut for all the onions and place the onions in a bowl.

Once all the onions have been cut add a large stockpot over medium heat and melt in the 4 tb of butter.

Once the butter has been melted, reduce the heat to low, add all the onions in, and a tb of kosher salt.  Do nothing for 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes stir the onions.  Keep stirring the onions every 10 minutes till they have been reduced by 1/2 (usually about an hour).

Starting out:

After about an hour:

After it has reached 1/2 go ahead and do not stir till about every 30 minutes.  This is the time consuming process because we want to slowly carmelize the onions and this will probably take about 3.5 hours. 

While you are waiting for the onions to reach a dark color one thing to do is prepare the bouquet garni.  Basically take the peppercorns, thyme, and bay leaf and wrap them in cheesecloth.  I like to use kitchen twine to tie it off and this way it makes it a lot easier to fish out the bouquet when you are done.

One thing to make sure you do if you are using homemade beef stock is to bring it to a boil in another bowl before adding it to the soup.  This way if the stock is bad you did not just ruin four hours of work.

Once the onions have reached a dark color go ahead and add in the stock, tb of sherry, tb of demi, and the bouquet garni.  Bring up to a gentle simmer and let it sit for 45-60 minutes.

I like to crisp up the bread while everything is simmering.  For this preheat your oven to 250 degrees and brush a couple pieces of bread with olive oil.  Place them in the oven for 7 minutes a side. 

After the soup has simmered preheat the oven to 450 degrees, laddle the soup into ovenproof bowls, top with a piece of crusty bread, and overlapping slices of cheese.

Place in the oven for 5 minutes and remove.  Now it is time to use a fun piece of kitchen wonder, the propane torch.  I like using the propane torch over the broiler because the torch gives you more control.  Fire up the propane torch and sorch the cheese.  If you are lacking a propane torch just set the broiler on high and place the bowl under the broiler for a minute till the cheese is bubbly. 

 

Serve and enjoy.

Tags: soup, All //