Friday, September 25, 2009

French Onion Soup



As promised, here is the French Onion Soup I made at the beginning of this week.

I bought a bag of onions a couple of weeks ago, so I wanted to use the rest of it. Onions are used in basically every recipe for extra flavor, and they're chock full of good vitamins. They have the flavanoid called quercetin, which protects against cataracts, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. They also contain 20% of your daily recommended vitamin C. Flavor and taste! What better reason to eat them?

...Well, I guess the tears.

So, I was cutting just 3 medium yellow/Vidalia onions and I was crying for at least 6 hours afterward. It was rather annoying. My nose kept running and the onions left their bite on the cutting board, so when my house-mate cut peaches, it had an undertone of onions. Whoops. Ah well, the soup came out good enough.

So, I made my own vegetable stock from scraps of carrots, lettuce, zucchini, broccoli, onions, and cilantro from the past two weeks. Just threw them in a pot of water and boiled with dried basil and oregano and sea salt. I did this first, then proceeded to make my French Onion Soup.


French Onion Soup (serves 4-5)
Ingredients
1-2 Tbs butter
3 yellow/ Sweet Vidalia onions, chopped into large pieces
2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
3-4 or 5 cups vegetable broth (beef broth would probably taste better)
~4 Tbs or more of balsamic vinegarette to replace white wine (I'm a sophomore, I don't have access to alcohol...)
Oregano, basil, salt, and pepper to taste

Directions
1. Melt butter in stovepot. Layer in onions with sprinkles of salt. Don't pan-fry them. You want them to turn translucent and soft. Cook for some 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Pour in vegetable broth and garlic. Season with herbs and salt and pepper. Bring to boil, then simmer, covered for 1 hour, stirring periodically. Pour in balasmic vinegarette halfway through, maybe. Taste and adjust seasonings.
3. Once satisfactory, turn off heat, let cool a bit.

Now, you can serve it with some toasted bread with cheese melted on top! The classic way is to pour them into broiler-safe crocks, top with slices of crusty French baguette and Gruyere cheese, and broil until they look GOOOD. As you can see from my pictures, I didn't have that stuff, so I just used my Oroweat potato bread and grated parmesan cheese. Good enough. Oh, and the picture has ground turkey in it, but it's as good without as well. Enjoy this college-version of French Onion Soup!

1 comment:

  1. It looks and sounds like your tears were worth it. The soup looks great and awesome you used what you had on hand.

    ReplyDelete