It takes me 3 DAYS to make my pot of homemade chili soup!
Before popping on the boards I looked up a pub in Omaha that served the best creamy onion soup I had ever had - yummy!
Gotta find a recipe for it!
I make crumpets for floating instead of using baguettes. The result is decidedly not as French, but it’s awfully good.
I’ll have to try your browning method soon. It’s definitely soup weather here.
A way to streamline it is to first make Onion Confit which can be frozen in ice-cube size chunks. Then, to make french onion soup, just toss the confit & stock together and you can have French Onion Soup in 30 minutes. The confit is great for other things as well, one cube adds just the right hint of sweetness to a good bolognese sauce and it’s great with steak.
I’m bumping this because Mama just referenced it, I read it, and ima gonna let it finish but you might like to check out this page-with-vid on caramelizing onions in a normal amount of time, and where you can find a link to the same guy’s humorous rant on Alton Brown on browning onions and and what other journalists pick up.
FTR, his pages/videos on brining are the best on the Net, IMO.
Coincidentally, the nytimes did a thing this week on onion soup, an interview with Pepin, who uses only water. Also makes a deal about red onions. Sweeter makes easier glaze? Well, add a whiff of sugar to white (non-sweet) onions.
Found this: history of onion soup in France. Interesting note about strength of onion in the 19th c., how it affected recipes.
Originally in French; the cite is to Google Translate of it. The source URL is in the long URL.
I just want to say (about five years late) that I think Qadgop’s method is spot on. My brother is a sous chef and uses a similar technique for his onion soup - it takes him two days to make a batch, going through many reductions, and it is the best I’ve tasted. Granted, he makes a really BIG batch for the restaurant but still, there’s a lot to be said for not rushing things.
I made a batch yesterday with 5# of large yellow onions. They came out sweeter than the versions I’ve made using Vidalia varieties.
I also made a pot of chicken noodle soup using the pressure cooker for the chicken and broth. Both came out great, the house smells wonderful and it warmed up the kitchen and living room nicely.
The link to the full 14-minute rant on that page was awesome. He’s been added to my bookmarks. Thanks!
I absolutely love the quick method of caramelizing onions and I use it often, but for French Onion soup? Slow and steady wins that particular race. I’ve used the Alton Brown video recipe and it makes a killer bowl of soup.
Ooo, this is timely! We had a big dinner for my father-in-law’s birthday just over a week ago and my son made French onion soup as his course. It was made surprisingly quickly, I thought, and was fully equal or superior to what I have eaten in most restaurants, but the memory of this thread was tickling the back of my mind the whole time. I wanted to get proper soup crocks in the next few days anyway; maybe I can convince him to try it Qadgop’s way next weekend.
My wife makes this soup in almost the same exacting fashion. Though I believe she uses more cheese. It’s sublime.
FWIW, when I was growing up in Quebec, Madam Taveres in St. Agathe set the bar by which all the other onion soups were measured. Only my wife’s onion soup has managed to surpass it. By the sounds of it, so has QtM’s.
You’re the second person to say they like the AB recipe. That surprises me, as I was not a fan. Maybe I need to try it again.
Jacques Pepin’s recipe uses only water. Good if vegetarians want to make this.
I have made AB’s version, Jacques Pepins version, and my version which is the long slow cooked onions, half beef/half veal or chicken stock, and the classic garlic crouton with gruyere under the broiler. I don’t tend to use much in the way of salt, and like to mince up some fresh parsley or basil for a bit of garnish hiding under the crouton. I like the idea of the crumpet - I might try that next batch I make.
I made French onion soup in the crock pot on Christmas eve, because I had a bunch of stuff to do and didn’t want to have to babysit the caramelizing onions. I was extremely skeptical about how brown the onions would get, but it worked excellently well. I started the onions in butter about 7 a.m. By noon or so, they were reduced and beautifully caramelized. The rest was a cinch.
Hopefully you didn’t use apple cider vinegar instead of plain apple cider like some of the folks in the comments section of Alton’s recipe!
But does she use more exclamation points?
StG
Ha! No, I used the cider. It was missing something, if I remember. Like he tried to cheat his way to a richer flavor, or something. I’m not sure.
No. She’s a professional editor. She uses them judiciously.