My Post of Atonement

Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry. I've had plans brewing in my brain to write a post about our trip down to Florida, and the technological wonderment contained therein, and I just keep ... not having time.

In lieu of an actual post, though, I'm going to give you my recipe for french onion soup, which I've more or less adapted from America's Test Kitchen. If you know me, you know how much I adore that show, and while not EVERYTHING I've made from the show has been the absolute greatest, this pretty much is. You might punch someone, it's that good.

French Onion Soup
(I'd say it serves 6-8, but if you're greedy like we can be sometimes, this might serve 4)

-4lb yellow onions - you may be able to use white, but try to stick with yellow. Definitely don't use red.
-3 tbsp butter
-1 tsp salt
-water
-1/2 c dry sherry (I just use a cheap $10 bottle from Calvert Woodley, but it's definitely not their brand, heh)
-4c chicken broth
-2c beef broth
(You can most certainly use veggie broth - I have done so for veggie friends - but you get a much richer flavor with the meat stocks. Using a homemade veggie stock would probably give it some legs, though.)
-2c water
-A few sprigs fresh thyme
-Bay leaf
-1/2tsp salt

-Crusty bread/baguette and grated gruyere for garnish/making it right

*You'll want a heavy oven-safe pot with a lid in which you can make this; I love my Lodge dutch oven just for this soup.

Preheat oven to 400. Spray the inside of your pot/dutch oven with cooking spray, and then halve and thinly slice the onions and throw them into the pot. Add the 3 tbs butter, sliced into a few chunks, add the 1tsp salt, then put the lid on the pot and throw it in the oven for an hour. Stir after that hour, then put the covered pot back in the 400-degree oven for another hour and a half.

Remove the put from the oven (you can turn it off now; that easy part is done, ha), turn a burner on "medium" and stir the reduced onions for 15-20 min over the flame. You want the onions to turn a deep mahogany color, and be sure to scrape the sides of the pot while you do this in order to get all of that flavor off of the sides.

Add 1/4c water to the onions, then stir/deglaze for 6 minutes or so. Do that two more times (the Official Source for this recipe does it 4 times total for 6-8 minutes each time, but I've found that this doesn't make a HUGE difference - it's a matter of whether you want to go one more round with stirring onions, pretty much). After deglazing with water, deglaze with the 1/2c of dry sherry for 5 minutes.

Add the broths and 2c water, along with the sprigs of thyme and bay leaf. It's easier to fish the spices out if you tie them together in a little bundle, but I don't usually have string around the house. Add 1/2 tsp salt, and let that simmer for at least 30 min.

As the soup simmers, slice a few small pieces of baguette and throw them in a toaster oven or under a broiler until they get nice and crusty (ie, they'll be able to sit in the soup without turning to mush). Grate some gruyere, and once the soup is done simmering and you have seasoned it with salt and pepper and removed the thyme sprigs and bay leaf because DO NOT EAT A BAY LEAF IT IS POISONOUS PEOPLE, ladle it into individual OVEN-SAFE (seriously) bowls. Put one piece of bread atop the soup, throw some gruyere on there, and stick it under a broiler for 4-5 min.

Be careful when you're done making it - the dishes get unbelievably hot, so you'll be using your hot pad more than a little bit. Let it rest for a few minutes, and once you can't stand it any longer, attack that soup. Don't burn your tongue.

This stores great in the fridge for a few days, and the flavor gets better the next day. Enjoy!!