A Place On The . Net

Playing around in the kitchen again.  It's as if I had a clue as to what I was doing, once again I've come up with a winner.  This was inspired by Alton Brown but I modified heavily.  And I'm cooking like my mother-in-law, not measuring much of anything.

Take four to six pounds of onions, skin them and quarter them.  You can do a mix of different types or you can do all sweet onions.  If you mix, lean toward the sweet.  For example, this time more than half of the onions were sweet yellow onions and the rest were mostly white and then one large red.

Put one stick of butter in a large dutch oven or stock pot.  Set the heat for medium high and watch the butter melt. The moment it is all melted, cover the bottom of the pot with a layer of onion.  Then sprinkle a pinch of kosher salt.  Add another layer of onion and sprinkle with salt...and so on, and so on until you have all the onion in the pot.

Leave the heat where it's at and DON'T stir. Don't even touch it for 15 to 20 minutes. Then you can stir it up a bit. Let it do it's thing for 5 to 10 minutes or so and stir again. Don't worry about burning it, the whole object of this is to caramelize the onions. Keep at this until it's all reduced to about 2 1/2 cups or so of dark mahogany heaven.

A word of caution here. That's caramelized onion in that pot. Of course it smells good. Obviously it's going to taste good too. But if you taste it, two things will happen. The first is that you will burn yourself, and that's not good. The second is that you won't be able to stop eating it and you won't be able to make soup. So just resist and your patience will be rewarded.

So now you've got this pot with the dark mahogany gift from above. Add enough white wine to cover the onions, roughly three cups or so. I used Vendange Semillon Chardonnay 2007, mostly because I got this huge bottle for only $7.00   I hate wine, nasty stuff to drink and it gives me a headache. But for cooking, especially for this soup, you really can't omit.  Reduce this down again until it's about the same consistency it was before you added the wine. Alton suggests a syrup consistency but I really didn't see that. Just make it good and thick.

Now add two cups of water. While that's coming back to a boil, add three beef bullion cubes. Add another two cups of water. Add three chicken bullion cubes. Once it's boiling again, add another two cups of water.

Take one container of frozen apple juice concentrate and thaw it in a bowl in the microwave. Just so it's liquid. Now add that to the pot and bring back to a boil.

Add two more cups of the wine, bring it back to a boil. Now add a teaspoon of garlic powder (this is not the time for fresh garlic, you gotta use powder). Sprinkle some crushed bay leave in there, just a pinch. Add about the same amount of thyme. Grind some fresh black pepper into the pot, I like a whole bunch. By now you've got a boil going again so add two or three more cups of wine and bring it back to a boil.

Once it reaches a boil, reduce the temp to simmer and put the lid on. Leave just a crack for some steam to escape. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.

At this point you could be done and just spoon it into your mouth. But the very best way to eat this stuff demands some more work. Slice some baguette about an inch thick or so. Very lightly brush with high quality extra virgin olive oil and toast on a cookie sheet, turning once, to make a nice crisp crouton. While you're doing that, ladle some soup into honest, proper french onion soup crocks. Do this with the crocks on another cookie sheet. Leave some room for the crouton. Once the croutons are done, remove them from the oven and set it to broil. Top off the crock with one or two, kind of seal it with crouton but leave some room on top for cheese.

Now shred some cheese on top. I prefer swiss, and lots of it. Enough that it's overflowing. Pile the stuff on. Now slide that into the oven an keep an eye on it. You want to melt the cheese and have it just start to brown...just barely. Kill the heat and remove from the oven.

OMG is this good!