French onion soup
Welcome to the Super Duper Long Weekend Edition of Soup Sunday! Since we had a long weekend, I decided to do a soup that was a bit more special than my “dump stuff in a pot” usuals.
I started by making beef stock the day before, roasting bones and vegetables before letting them simmer together for hours. In hindsight, I should’ve doubled the amount of bones (I had just over a kilo) for a more meaty flavour.
Sunday was spent knee deep in onions. I ended up peeling, slicing and cooking 3 kilos of onions. Yes, 3 fricken kilos. (Actually, Bro helped me peel some of the onions. Peeling onions is a pain in the arse!) I had to drag out my biggest pot to start softening all the onions – a pot that mum and dad brought us when they were last over. I don’t know what other parents buy for their children, but my parents give us pots (on a previous visit we received the magic pot).
I followed
a recipe on the Gourmet Traveller website (although I made 1 & 1/2 times the quantity). After the onions had spent the first twenty minutes in the pot with the lid on, the heat was turned down low and I let them cook for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally.
After the long cooking, the onions had collapsed into a much smaller pile, and were soft, sweet and golden. I added the stock and herbs and let it simmer for another 30-40 minutes and it was finally ready! It had only taken all afternoon.
My patience was rewarded though, it was a pretty good soup. My only complaint was that I had let it simmer down too much and I thought the soup was too thick. And I’m not sure I would make it again, it really does take a long time!
We had invited Benisa over to partake in Soup Sunday, and naturally I had to serve them dessert. I opted for apple sponge pudding.
Instead of doing one big pudding, I baked it in individual ramekins. When I portioned out the pudding batter amongst the ramekins, I realised that I didn’t have enough so ended up doubling the amount of batter. Looking back, I would skip the mixed spice in the batter, and just use cinnamon. And if I’m being picky, the sponge turned out a bit firm – I may have overbaked it.
Nevertheless, if you ignore my nitpicking, it was another successful edition of Soup Sunday. The only question now is, what’s coming up this week…?
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Danny
June 13, 2009 @ 12:53 am
wow, that's a lot of onions! french onion soup always sounds delicious but i think there are too many steps for me! i would end up using a beef bouillon cube and it probably wouldn't taste as good 😛
Lisa
June 13, 2009 @ 9:23 am
I think all your hard work was definitely worth it – and I disagree about the thickness. That's hows I likes my soups! It was delicious and I would have gone back for thirds except I was too polite.
Cindy
June 13, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
Your soup looks fantastic! I'd like to try my hand at French onion soup this winter, though I'll make sure I've got plenty of time and patience on my hands first. 🙂
Agnes
June 14, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
Hi Danny – yes, it's definitely a soup where you should use homemade stock (or at least a good quality bought one!).
Lisa – I'm glad you enjoyed it. You know you should never be afraid of being rude around us!
Cindy – thanks! Definitely try it when you have several hours to hang around stirring onions. 😉
Maria@TheGourmetChallenge
June 17, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
How fantastic! I love your soup episodes! they always make my tummy growl. French onion soup is one of my fav's, but i do agree it takes a very long time. Your soup looks for golden brown and delicious! I would have asked for another serve!
ice tea: sugar high
June 18, 2009 @ 1:22 am
Gosh! I surely won't survive chopping that much onions! I hate chopping onions. Tried every trick in the book, I still cried everytime. But that onion soup sounded worth all the effort. Yumm yumm
Agnes
June 23, 2009 @ 9:16 pm
Thanks Maria 😀 I knew it would take a while, but I didn't realise how much patience it would need. It was worth it in the end though!
Asti – I cut all the onions by an open window so that helped with the fumes. An onion paid me back for slicing up all its comrades though – I sliced one the day after and I had tears streaming down my face. Gah!