In the spirit of @curioscurio 's soup posting lately, I would like to tell y'all about a little tradition of mine, then tell you how I pull it off, so you'll have to excuse me while I go all recipe blog on you, for just a moment.
Video description: A video of a recently oven-warmed bowl of french onion soup, with a moment from The Adventure Zone: Amnesty overlaid in the audio. In this audio clip, Justin McElroy as Duck Newton says the following:
"All I could think about was all the french onion soup I missed, and... if I died, all the french onion soup I'd miss out on in the future! I-I-I swear to god, but I turned down saving the world to eat french onion soup."
After first hearing this particular episode of TAZ, I had to head into town for my once a week upload spree, for at that time, my internet was horrible enough that even getting video up through a coffee shop's internet was an improvement to blocking the connection all weekend at home.
Normally, I'd go into a starbucks, hole up with my tea, scone, and settle in for the long, slow process of these uploads, but this time, that french onion soup really stuck in the back of my head, so I hit up the local panera instead, to give the french onion soup a shot, as I'd never had it before. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I burned the roof of my mouth, but with what was left of my taste buds, I IMMEDIATELY understood how Duck felt. There's something about even a mediocre soup that grounds you into the moment you're living, and for that day, I managed to have a much better time than usual, despite slogging through the ice, snow, and wind to halfway sneakernet my work onto a platform, unsure if any of it'd get seen.
From that first bite, I KNEW I had to have this more often. Sure, the panera version was just average, but I bet I could find a better way if I made it at home. Fast forward to new year's eve, where I found myself at home, all day. Used to be, my mom's side of the family would have a big bash for NYE, but the plague coming down killed that pretty solidly, so I needed something else to do. I normally would watch the Twilight Zone marathon, but I figured this time, well, french onion soup takes so much darned time, might as well spend my day on it!
So, I threw together the ingredients, (roughly based on binging with babish's, just a few edges sanded off, promise, I'll get to explaining it soon) and lo and behold, it's TRULY something that can and should be a highlight of your year! As a result, I've now got a new tradition to go with the twilight zone: Every new year's eve, I spend most of the day working on homemade baguettes and french onion soup, to celebrate with a bowl of something beautiful, difficult, and, most of all, present in the moment, in hopes that my year can go just as well as the moments that I start with. (I've also included my partner in this, but she doesn't care for french onion soup, so she chooses a similarly time-consuming or decadent soup I juggle alongside the onions)
In addition to that, since I'm making FAR more than I can safely eat in the coming week, I take half of it, and throw it in the freezer. This half is, usually, for sometime in July. Halfway through the year, when I have some times where things get rough, (I swear, it's always July and October around here, oof) I break out that french onion soup, as a reminder that good things, good things can come again. The last of that middle-of-the-year batch for 2024 is what we see in the video, by the way!
Anyway, enough of me being sappy, you want a RECIPE, don'tcha?
Ingredients:
2 3 pound bags of onions. I tend to go for a mix of red and vidalia onions here, but you can surely use normal white onions, too!
2 to 4 fennel bulbs (optional, but I find they add some nice anise vibes to the soup)
6 to 12 cups of broth depending on how much you cook your onions.
(preferably beef, but I'm not gonna explode if you use a different one. I tend to use whatever I've got in the freezer from making broth outta my various kitchen scraps, usually most of my post-thanksgiving broth)
1 bottle of dry red wine, of which we use 1 cup (I use cabernet sauvignon, hence the extra half stick of butter, but if you want to omit that half stick, sherry is more traditional!)
1 and 1 half sticks of butter
Grueyere cheese, for melting o'er top! (I also add parmesean and, occasionally, whatever other flavorful cheese I've got lying around)
Baguette chunks, to go beneath the cheese but overtop the soup as a crouton. I just use Claire Saffitz's baguette recipe, mildly adapted for my sourdough starter, to make some demibaguette, but you're well within your rights to instead use a bakery baguette.
various herbs and spices, with particular attention to peppercorns, cloves, garlic, parmesean rind, green onion, parsley, and sage (optional, for boosting the stock)
Equipment:
your favorite chewing gum (yes, really)
A dutch oven, or large enough pot to hold all those onions
A second, medium size pot to reheat the frozen broth in
a knife you're comfortable using a LOT, if not a mandolin for how many onions you're chorpin'
Some sort of scraping implement compatible with your dutch oven, wooden spoon is traditional, but I've been known to use a silicone scraper
Step 1: Chop your onions. Chewing your favorite gum so you don't get whammied by onion stank, first cut them in half, along the line of the root and stem, then remove the paper, roots, and stem. Once you've halved all your onions, cut them in to thin-ish slices, along that same "pole to pole" line, somewhere between a quarter and an eighth of an inch thick, in slices I like to call "structural" size. The onions need enough integrity to withstand the LONG caramelization process, but not so much they take a million years to finish caramelizing.
Step 1.5: Chop your optional fennel, in a similar shape to the onions. If it came with stems, keep those for improving the broth in lieu of cloves!
Step 2: Preheat your dutch oven with the stick of butter. Once that butter has begun to foam, toss your many, many onions and fennel in the pot. it's going to look like WAY too much, but I assure you, it cooks down a remarkable amount.
Step 3: Begin caramelizing your onions. This is a LONG process, even on medium heat. Stir intermittently, you don't want them sticking, but you do want them to slowly shed fond onto the pot. I do it until they're starting to progress beyond jammy into something so dark as to nearly resemble the wine we'll be deglazing with. Do I overdo it? maybe! There's a reason I do this once a year, it takes easily half the day!
Step 3.5: If you're using store bought broth here, add it to your second pot, alongside the various spices and herbs, and perhaps a few celery stock and carrot chunks. Leave it on a middling simmer in the back while you're caramelizing onions, so it takes on all those delicious flavors.
Step 4: Once the onions have become donion enough for you, deglaze with that cup of wine. Scrape THOROUGHLY, all that fond has a TON of flavor!
Step 5: Add the half stick of butter immediately after getting the fond up, you've got to counteract those tannins!
Step 6: Add the broth, straining out those spices and additions if you used them. If it doesn't seem soupy enough, add some heated water to balance it out, you've done SO much to build flavor here, it's not going to explode if you dilute a smidge. I like to just see the texture of the onions in the fluid when I stir. Let it come up to a full simmer, if not a light boil, and hold it there until the alcohol has cooked off to your liking. (I let it hold for a Good While, as I like to taste the flavors, not the booze)
Step 7: Plating! Mostly fill an oven safe bowl or ramekin with your delicious, delicious soup, plonk enough baguette chunks overtop to fill the surface area, then grate a (frankly) irresponsible volume of your cheeses on top of that. Toss the whole affair in a 350f oven until the cheese is browned, bubbly, and you can't stand waiting a single second longer!
The world is full of problems for us to solve, my friends. Remember to take a break just before you feel you need it, life is something chipped away at day by day.
