Just thinking about the pain of the prep work required to make it.
When I was in high school, too many years back to think about, I worked nights as the grill guy at T-Willies Frostop on North State Street in Jackson. I think the address was 4325. The popular burger place was pretty much across the street from the old Primos Northgate Restaurant location, on the next lot south of Pasquales Pizza. I was a terrific fryer of Fries, Shrimp and Fish burger patties, Fried Apple Turnovers, and skilled in the grill work required to put out Butter Burgers, Lot-O-Burgers, Hot Dogs, Ham Sandwiches, Grilled Cheeses, Pork and Beef BBQ.
I guess the worst part of working the back of the house was when we were chopping onions. We went through lots of onions at T-Willies and they had to be peeled, sliced and chopped on an every day or two schedule. I have always been easily irritated by airborne onion juice, and the number of onions we went through every day certainly stirred up lots of irritation during the late part of the night shift when things calmed down and Robert and Will had the unpleasant job of chopping a gallon or three of sliced and diced onions. I lost track of Robert over the years, but Will and I are still friends. I am uncertain if the pain those guys endured back then (1960s) made them better old guys, but tears ran down my cheeks in sympathy for them as they did their job back then.
What does this have to do with this week's recipe? Absolutely nothing, except you can't make good Friench Onion soup without shedding a few sliced onion tears. French Onion has always been a favorite at our house, usually for dinner on chilly nights. I guess I would eat it once a week if I could stand the emotional tears of eating something so good.
Here is how I do it, complete with a mixture of old and newer photos of the process.
Ingredients:
5 onions, sliced - about five cups
Beef Broth
Beef
Bullion Paste (I use both broth and paste to make it beefy rich)
1/4
stick butter
1 Tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons Thyme
2
bay leaves
8 ounces red wine
French Bread slices
Provolone
or Swiss Cheese, sliced or grated
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Slice the onions - five cups of sliced onion will make enough for maybe four or five servings, depending on your serving size.
In a suitable pot, add the butter and oil and sauté the onions until they are nice and caramelized..
Sauté them slowly until caramelized, taking care to not burn them. It usually takes about 20 minutes to cook the onions.
Then deglaze the
pan with 8 ounces of red wine,
2 or 3 cans of beef broth, 16 ounces of water and 2 Tablespoons of Better than Broth Beef bouillon. I use the low sodium variety of Better than Broth to keep my soup from getting too salty. If you make your own beef stock, that is even better, if you make a flavorful beef broth.
Add two teaspoons
of thyme, a couple of bay leaves and a teaspoon of black pepper.
Cook with a lid
for 20 – 30 minutes to let the bay leaves do their thing and get
good flavor.
While the soup is
finishing, set up the French bread. I slice them maybe 3/8 inch thick
and toast them under the broiler.
Put the bread on top of the soup in an oven proof bowl and add lots of provolone or Swiss cheese (in this case MSU Vallagret Swiss) on top of the bread
and melt the
cheese under the broiler until it begins to brown.
Ready to eat.
Having a glass of red wine alongside of your soup is nice.
Leftover
soup can be stored in the fridge for next day.
The following photos show an alternate way of doing the bread and cheese, where the bread is prepped as cheese toast and floated on the soup as you eat.
then served on the plate alongside the soup and added to the bowl on the table.
Thanks for looking at my post.
God bless you.
13 comments:
Yum. I still have a wheel of MSU Vallagret on hand, too! It's an excellent cheese.
I chop onions upwind from the stove exhaust fan on the highest setting. It helps. I've read that if you briefly microwave whole onions, they won't emit as much tear gas when you chop them, but I haven't tried that. I usually just quarter the onions when I make French onion soup. They break down during the cooking process.
Mention of Pasquale’s Pizza makes my heart ache and spins me into a reverie. The best thing on their menu was, believe it or don’t, a roast beef sandwich, hot, dripping with gravy, served on a small cheesesteak bun. And I could get fries with that, too, about 3/8 inches square, golden, and hot. It was so delicious I used to take dates there just to have one for myself, damn what the girl wanted or thought. I’ve tried over the decades to recreate in my own kitchens that roast beef sandwich and never come close to the memory.
Poly, that cheese you call for works as well as Gruyère?
My dates in high school were few and far between (never figured out what the problem was), so I'd go to Pasquale's on my own for that sandwich. Good memory.
A meal made in heaven. My complements to the chef! Bon Appetit!
I, too, suffer the eye-watering reaction to onion fumes and have tried the stove vent, running water and many other hacks. However, my salvation was the day I put on a pair of swim goggles! Laugh as you may, I have never shed another tear while chopping onions.
8:24am
Bear's 5 onions might be Vidalia which, for moi, don't cause eye reaction.
Thanks, Bear! Try holding a wooden match stick between your teeth while working with onions. The sulfur in the match tip will neutralize the onion vapor.
9:19 and 9:40, The sandwich we all loved at Pasquale's was called a Stromboli Steak Sandwich. The were so good. T-Willies employees got their food for half price, and the rootbeer was free. However if we weren't busy and Pasquale's was still open, I was guilty more than once (Closer to a bunch of times, than once) of going up to Pasquales for a Stromboli Steak Sandwich. Primos Deli had Fried Chicken, which was also good, and Gingerbread men, which were great, and still are.
I try to keep homemade stock in the freezer and resort to storebought only when I run out. I enjoy stock-making day - a big pot of chicken stock and a big one of beef stock simmering for hours. I use a colander to strain the stock instead of fine mesh strainer because it makes a heftier stock with little bits of meat and aromatics in it.
Your posts are a weekly highlight for me. Thank you!
I have a request. Please post a printable version of the recipes or link it elsewhere, so some of us can print it out for future use (without the pictures). Like what RSJ does, please.
12:08 You may or may not know this, but today's post is the 106th posting. Yes, the Great and Wonderful King of all Fishes, has been very nice to allow me to camp out in his front yard for almost two years now. I have no idea how long your request would take, but I am an old guy with other interests that are more important to me and have no idea where I would find the time to do what you ask. I am genuinely sorry, but I see no way to make it happen. My personal recipe collection in electronic (Word for windows based) but it is 45 Megabytes and 2145 recipes in size, so KF would stroke out if I posted that.
Mr. Bear: THANK YOU! This is a winner! I will make this.
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