French Onion Soup

What do you do when you have a sack of onions from Costco that you have to use right away? French onion soup! We had a lot of onions leftover from the crawfish boil two weeks ago and I didn’t want them to go to waste. Since we will be traveling for the next month, I have been on a mission to cook and eat all perishables. This has gone a little bit further than intended so we’ve also been eating through the freezer and pantry…probably could have used some fresh vegetables in the past few days, but oh well! I would call this mission a success.

I didn’t know what else to do with that many onions, we had some bread and cheese to get through, and I also had some beef broth in the pantry that I didn’t really know what to do with. French onion soup seemed to make sense, despite the fact that it is 85 degrees out. Luckily, we have air conditioning!

I found a recipe for French Onion Soup at Simply Recipes and went from there. Per usual, my modifications:

• Used half beef broth and half chicken broth because that’s what I had in the pantry. Obviously a homemade stock would have been better but at the very least, stick to beef broth…the flavor is more authentic.
• I used a thick slice of ciabatta, which I toasted before dropping into the soup and throwing into the oven. I don’t know if it made a difference, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I forgot that the bread would expand while soaking up the soup so I ended up with a bit more bread than I would have liked. Next time, I would only use enough bread to cover half (or less) of the top.
• Had some random cheeses in the fridge, so didn’t bother using “authentic” cheese. I think one was a Swiss Emmentaler from Fair Oaks Farms and the other was some grated parmesan.
• I used the smallest oven-proof dishes I had but it was a good size for a lunch portion (that’s all we had for lunch).
• My onions never caramelized…I think because I stirred too much. Or I got impatient…the next World Cup match was starting soon and I didn’ t want to be cooking after kickoff!

This is what 6 sliced yellow onions looks like

This is the 6 yellow onions that never caramelized

Despite no caramelization, it tasted good anyway! Cover anything in bubbling cheese and it is hard to fail.

Posts will be sporadic or non-existant for the next month as we explore London, South Africa and Namibia!

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