Soup time

I’m crying

The pot is NEVER big enough.

You can throw a lid on it in the opening stages to help break the onions down quicker. All I have in the pot so far is 7 good sized onions and a full stick of butter.

Okay. Now we’re talkin. Onions are starting to break down a little. Hit em with a palm full of salt. I don’t like to salt them right away. I want them to wilt from the heat. Get sticky. Then salt. Your salt will mix in better and adhere more that way.

Salt is drawing all the water out of the onions. Once we cook this liquid off then we can raise the temp a teeny bit and start to pick up color. Lid should be off and you should be stirring occasionally.

Any recipe that says you can make French onion soup in like, an hour, is absolute bunk. To do it right it takes time. You need to go low and slow to really develop the sweetness of the onions. If you ever see a recipe that says less than like, 3 or 4 hours ignore it.

Onions are slowly getting more golden but we have a long way to go. The trick is to essentially make onion jam before you add any more liquid to this pot.

You can raise your heat a little at this point. Not a lot. I’ve had mine at a 4 on my gas stove. I’m gonna take it up to just below a 6.

When your heat goes up you have to stir much more often. If your onions burn even a little bit you might as well pitch it in the trash (and you’ve already put in so much work!) You gotta be very on top of it when the heats up.

I’m getting some sizzle on the bottom of the pot when I stir the onions which means the liquid is getting close to being cooked off. This is where you gotta be real careful. We’re gonna turn the heat back down soon.

You should be stirring real frequently now.

Hell of a difference

There’s basically no liquid pooling on the top of my onions anymore. We can keep it going at this temp and be hyper vigilant but I’m turning mine back down cause I’m drinking wine and tweeting and don’t want to blow it now. We’re getting color but we’re gonna get a lot more.

Getting progressively more golden. A lot of people would stop here. This is the stage they call “fools gold”. You’re leaving a ton of flavor on the table. But we’re not gonna be fools. We’ll soldier on. It’s really starting to smell incredible.

I’m taking my heat down even lower now. To achieve peak caramelization we gotta be patient and careful.

See what I mean? We’re getting there.

Since i’m using chicken stock instead of beef I need to really put extra love into the onions.

At this point you could make a number of things. This could easily turn into an absolutely dank gravy. These onions taste crazy. You could just put this on toast. But we’re gonna stick with soup.

So this is basically the remainder of ingredients going into this soup. Stock, bay leaf, white pepper, black pepper, salt (to taste) and fresh thyme. (Dried is fine too, just use less. I’ll use about 3 sprigs)

Also I’m going to deglaze the pot with wine. Ideally we’d use a dry white. I have rosé so rosé it shall be.

Color wise. We’re about there. There isn’t a lot more we can take out of these onions.

For reference

Now add your wine (half a cup or so) and scrape that bottom clean

Okay. 2 bay leaf, couple big sprigs of thyme, a few cracks of black pepper. White pepper goes in now too but CAUTION: white pepper is a super strong flavor and can easily fuck your soup. Be super sparing. Add more if you want but real incremental. Added about 1.5 QTs stock.

Keep the heat on a medium low and pop a lid on there. Go sit down for a while. That’s what I’m doing.

Listen to some rammstein. Unwind a little.

Give your soup a stir from time to time. We want this to simmer lid on for a bit. Extract all the flavor out of those thyme sprigs and bay leaves. pop the lid off in a little bit and let this condense a touch but for right now let’s let it roll lid on. I have it at 3 on the stove

Now I don’t have gruyere or bread to make a nice proper crout. I also don’t have oven safe soup crocks to broil this. If you don’t either have no fear. We’re doing this quarantine style.

I wish you could all smell this. It’s absurd. My neighbors are going to be furious cause there’s no way my stairwell doesn’t smell like it. (Lid off now and let it roll low and slow for a bit.)

Time for some chef fuel

Look at all the color these onions gave a blonde broth. This is what we’re after.

By the by... this song slaps

Okay. Soup is basically done. look at this color.

Now I like I said, I don’t have bread to make a nice crouton and I do t have gruyere but I do have a bag of shitty salad croutons and I have smoked Gouda which I think will play real nice. (Slicing this Gouda thin was a challenge.)

Here we go. My plating always sucks but my food tastes dope as fuck. Garnished with some fresh thyme leaves and some parsley.

This is good as fuck. The smoked Gouda really works well.

I’m super happy with this soup. It’s over the top delicious. The patience pays off. I JUST hit the white pepper threshold. A lucky break. Any more and I’d have fucked the soup. All my warnings and I almost made the cardinal mistake. Just under the wire.

White pepper tastes a little farty. It’s a funk you want but too much funk is no fun. I got very lucky. I can’t emphasize enough how careful you need to be with it.

Also nothing on earth makes me sneeze like white pepper. Just popping the container open gets me going.