[Welcome to the final installment of ✨ Newer, Better Month ✨ on Smitten Kitchen, when I update a few SK classics with new knowledge, new techniques, and with real-life time constraints in mind. Previously: Perfect Spaghetti and Meatballs, Extra-Flaky Pie Crust, and Extra-Billowy Dutch Baby Pancake.]
French onion soup isn’t just a endlessly favourite of mine, it’s — together with the opposite recipes I up to date this month — what I take into account a core recipe in my arsenal as a result of it aligns with a lot that I believe is vital in cooking. It’s completely budget-friendly (and downright low-cost) to make. It’s constituted of buy-anywhere substances and only a few of them — 99% of the flavour comes from simply onions, cooked very slowly, reworked by a method you want no superior cooking expertise to grasp. And it has a depth of taste that’s unparalleled in nearly the rest I understand how to make.
Reading: Smitten kitchen french onion soup
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Up till just a few years in the past, I solely made it a method: Julia Baby’s. I nonetheless suppose her onion-caramelizing method is nice. It saves slightly hands-on time, principally a miracle in the case of caramelizing onions, though nothing goes to make it go rapidly. That’s how I cooked once I started this web site: the way in which I used to be advised to. However via repetition and actual life, I’ve made changes. For instance, I at all times felt that the soup wanted extra onions, extra bulk, for the quantity of inventory. I by no means discovered that the flour added any notable physique to the soup the way in which it ought to; it didn’t actually keep suspended. And once I added booze, it was typically wine or vermouth however simply as usually a dry sherry and even cognac, and I’d deglaze the pan with it and cook dinner it off as a lot as attainable. Once I started with extra onions, I didn’t must cook dinner the soup as lengthy after the inventory was added (15 to twenty minutes is loads) to finish up with a soup with good physique.
And I end it with as little frippery as attainable. Don’t have ovenproof bowls? Make a casserole of it, like a large pot pie. Or, create particular person cheese toasts and drop them onto the soup. Need it vegetarian? Use a very good darkish vegetable inventory, or mushroom broth, which is a favourite right here; the extra strong, the higher. Can’t probably think about spending an hour or longer steadily attending to caramelizing onions? Take a look at The Meals Lab’s approaches (strain cooker or different) to rushing it up. Need much less hands-on time? Take a look at The Kitchn’s slow-cooker strategy. Hate slicing onions? Sigh, that, for me, is the half I dislike probably the most. For this, I like to recommend placing on some music, donning your pink onion goggles, and revel in figuring out that when you get this executed, the rest of the recipe is nearly hands-off.
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Beforehand
One 12 months in the past: Asparagus and Egg Salad with Walnuts and Mint Two years in the past: Cornbread Waffles and Mushroom Tartines Three years in the past: Sesame Soba and Ribboned Omelet Salad and Apricot Hazelnut Brown Butter Hamantaschen 4 years in the past: The Comfort Prize (A Mocktail) and Baked Chickpeas with Pita Chips and Yogurt 5 years in the past: Complete-Grain Cinnamon Swirl Bread Six years in the past: Lentil and Chickpea Salad with Feta and Tahini Seven years in the past: Comfortable Eggs with Buttery Herb-Gruyere Toast Troopers Eight years in the past: Spaetzle 9 years in the past: Irish Soda Bread Scones and Spinach and Chickpeas Ten years in the past: Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Strawberry Sauce and Bialys Eleven years in the past: Caramel Walnut Banana Upside Down Cake and Swiss Easter Rice Tart Twelve years in the past: Blended Berry Pavlova
And for the opposite facet of the world: Six Months In the past: Crispy Spinach Pizza 1.5 Years In the past: Chocolate Tahini Challah Buns 2.5 Years In the past: Selfmade Merguez with Herby Yogurt and Magic Apple-Plum Cobbler 3.5 Years In the past: The Good Manhattan 4.5 Years In the past: Cucumber Lemonade and Sunken Apple and Honey Cake
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