In the thread about foods that should go away for a while, onion soup is mentioned a few times. Me, I love the stuff. As a matter of fact, I made a batch of onion soup for dinner tonight on this cold and wet evening in the Salt Lake valley. Maybe next time I'll do some pictures and write up a more exact recipe.
Basically I took a large yellow, a red and a sweet Walla Walla, peeled them and sliced into slivers, cutting from the north pole to the south, rather than slicing parallel to the equator, if that makes sense. Heated up a large sauce pan over low heat, melted a few tablespoons of butter in it. Put about 1/3 of the onion slivers in the pot, sprinkled with a good pinch or two of kosher salt. Then another third of the onions, more salt, the rest of the onions topped off with another bit of salt. Covered and let them cook for about an hour and a half, stirring maybe every 15 - 20 minutes or so.
The low and slow cooking combined with the salt pulls out a fair bit of moisture, the onions get very soft and soupy, not really brown and carmelized like you see in some onion soup recipes. But you pretty much cook out the sulphur compounds and are left with a sweet, syrupy mess of onions. I take the lid off, add a couple tablespoons of worcestershire sauce and maybe a cup or two of stock ( often chicken, tonight was beef ) a splash of sherry and some black pepper. Depending on how much salt you added at the start you may or may not want more. White wine and apple juice are also good liquids to add at this point, but I didn't have any on hand. Well, I could have raided the cellar and opened a bottle for just this purpose. Red wines tend to not go well with the sweetness of the onions. Anyway, add your liquids of choice to get your preferred consistency, bump up the heat a bit, let simmer for another 15 - 20 minutes.
I usually don't bother with the slice of bread and broiled cheese topping, just ladle it into a bowl and top with grated cheese. Tonight was some gruyere I had on hand and a bit of parmesan. Good stuff on this dark and stormy night.
mjb.  |