The perfect onion soup in its melted, bumpy glory. (All Credit Photos: George Graham)
According to the French, there are two ways to make classic onion soup – the right way and the wrong way. And even if the French are accustomed to be a bit arrogant when it comes to their kitchen, I have to agree. This is why.
Like many, for years I made my onion soup with ordinary mistakes. The onion cut for an hour or about in a chicken broth bought from the store, completed with a fried slice of French bread and a melted mozzarella topping. ! Now, you do not understand me wrong, in those days I was quite pleased with the kind of food and it was tasty enough that my friends were the most free. Well, if it is true that ignorance is happy, I was in a state of euphoric stupidity.
Flash before a lot of years and a journey to New York who opened my eyes. Not France, but New York was the place where I had my first taste of a prepared French onion soup. Since then I have eaten onion soup in France, but I still had a version to reach it. It was a simple French Bistrot owned by Soho chefs, who focused on the classics and a taste of its rich, wizardy broth was an expanding experience that put me on the path of discovery.
After dinner and persistent for a period over a glass of burgundy and a wooden cheese plate, the cook eventually appeared in the kitchen. He was a French Crust, well worn. He sat down by sipping a glass of Rouge wine and shared the recipe for his classic food. With a heavy Parisian accent, it revealed my secrets. I took notes.
Beef bones, deep caramelized onion, a gratin gruyere and a dried sherry splash, OH and chicken legs. Uh, what?
Chicken legs add body and aroma.
Yes, it seems that cooking with chicken legs is classic French – Asian and Latin. Traditionally, the classic onion soup is made of a beef stock. And while it is always about the aroma, he told me that he especially uses the chicken legs for gelatinous thickening, gives him the stock. The secret of the rich, round, round, of its beef stock is, from all things, the chicken legs. Well, this is essentially everything he told me before he finished his wine and quickly disappeared into the kitchen. But this was enough to understand the necessary complexity of a dish that seems simple. Oh, and one more thing he told me, you will spend a few days by doing it.
Okay, please stay with me. I’m not talking about two whole days stolen from your precious life to make a bowl of soup. It just means that the ingredients must meet slowly and with adequate time to melt together in perfection. Cooking with unattended hob is a technique that separates the restaurant kitchens from homemade kitchens. Long, slow braces, infused with wine, flavored-filled stocks that collapse on a low fire and bones full of marrow that fry for hours in a hot oven-these are the French techniques that raise the food of all kinds.
Cajun Rural and Creole chefs have known these techniques of entire generations. And with this in my mind, I proposed to bind the classic French with a classic caun in an interpretation of this dish that could very well become one of your favorites. I admit it wasn’t easy. I prevented myself from several versions just to find my way back to a more basic version that reminds of the one I discovered in that little soho bistrot, but with a few improvements in Louisiana.
Patience is the basic ingredient to make this dish. Slide into your culinary pace and relax. The broth – dark, rich with body – is the main reason why most amateurs, like me, last so long to discover how good this dish can be. It is intensive time and has forecast and patience to reach that final aroma that wraps and infuses the onion.
I use a variety of onion.
Oh, onion. You will have to sweat them, coaxing the sugars to release them in a slow, patient, on a low flame, stirring intermittently. The process can take an hour, sometimes longer. He is a therapeutic type of cooking, where you have to be careful, but not too much. The onion will tell you when they will be ready – when they have taken that deep, dark, caramelized, sweet, but slightly bitter, with a layer of complexity that feels almost as if it were there, just waiting to present itself.
Now let’s talk about bread. There can be no bread; It must be a rustic, crusty French wand, which has become the foundation of almost every French dish. It is the kind of bread that, when it is fried, keeps its own on the weight of that melted cheese. Cheese is just as essential. Gruyère, or comté, melted and gold, bubble as a dream. It covers the soup, creating that divine contrast of crispy margins, caramelized and creamy depths.
Soft, delicious and dark, with a rich aroma – the perfect French onion soup.
French onion soup is more than just a meal; It is a culture that requires patience, reverence and little time. And at the end of it, you have a bowl with something that tastes of everything that is good in the world – simple, soul and timeless. There is no haste, no claim, just an honest, satisfying hug of one of the most durable in France.
Eat it slowly. Deserve.
French onion soup in Louisiana
Listen! Making this beef stock from scratch is the key to this recipe. While you are, do enough to freeze and use for so many other caja vessels and graily league creole.
Recipe of: George Graham – AcadianaTable.com
Serves: 8
ingredients
Beef stock
- 5 kilograms of beef bones
- 2 large yellow onions, quarters
- 4 celery stems, broken into large pieces
- 4 whole carrots, cut into large pieces
- 2 tablespoons of tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons of Creole mustard or coarse granulation mustard
- 1 cup red wine
- 4 quarters of water
- 1 kilogram of chicken
- 6 black peppercorns
- 2 bay leaves
Onion and soup
- ½ cup of bacon fat
- 10 big yellow onion
- 5 medium sweet onion such as Vidalia
- 2 purple onion
- 3 leek stems, distant green stems
- 6 large spring onions, distant green stems
- 1 tablespoon sugar sugar with sugar
- 1 tablespoon flour for all purposes
- ½ cup dry sherry
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- A pile of freshly tied thyme straps in a package
- Slices of French wand, fried
- 3 cups of crushed gruyere cheese or comté cheese
- More fresh thyme branches for the gasket
Instructions
Beef stock
- Preheat the oven at 400ºF.
- Rinse the bones of beef in cold water until all the blood is removed. Assemble the bones on a large pan and place it in the oven. Fry for 1 hour and add the tomato paste and the creole mustard by brushing on the bones. Add the onion, celery and carrots and continue to fry until browned, about 30 minutes. Once you completely brown and caramelize, remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- In a large stock over medium heat, add all the meat and vegetables in the pan. Pour all the fat from the frying pan. Turn a tall burner under the pan and add the wine. With a spatula scrape the pieces and piece, while tasting the pan and reduce the wine by at least half. Add the whole content to the stock. Add the chicken legs, grain beans and bay leaves. Cover with water. Bring the pot to a boil and then lower the heat over low heat. Cook for 5 hours by glittering the surface to remove residual fats and scruid every hour.
- Once finished, strain the liquids into a fine strainer that removes the bones and legs and place in a covered container to cool. Refrigerator overnight. The next day, tasting the fat from the tip of the liquid. Beef stock can be used immediately or frozen for future use.
Onion and soup
- Cojut all the yellow, sweet and purple onions and remove the parts of the leeks and spring onion. Slice the yellow onion of ¼ -inch, so that, once cooked, they keep their shape. Slice the rest of the thin onion for flavor.
- In a large cast iron bowl over medium heat, add the bacon fat along with all onion and leeks. Cook slowly and caramelize to eliminate bitterness and make sweetness. Try not to shake too much because it will prevent caramelization. Once the onion begins to brown, add the molasses with a closed sugar – a sweet note from Cajun. Cook for 45 minutes in total.
- The cooking of these onions requires the same attention as a dark Roux caun. Speaking of Roux, here add 1 tablespoon of flour.
- Mix the onion and allow the flour to combine with bacon fat. You want to get a dark caramel color to remove all the sugars from the onion, but do not stop burns or will pass from sweet sugary to a burnt bitterness in the shortest time. The low, slow and agitated decrease is the key.
- Remove the onion from the pot in a platter. Turn the fire to the medium-high level and add the sherry. Mix with a spatula and release the pot that scrapers all the ruminite pieces along the bottom. Reduce sherry by half and turn off the heat.
- Add the onion mixture to a stock over medium heat. Add the beef stock until the onion mixture is covered. Add thyme and let cook for 1 hour.
- After 1 hour, the soup must be combined and thickened. Remove the thyme pack. Taste the soup and adjust with salt and pepper.
- In an oven -resistant individual bowl, fill with soup and place a rod on top. Sprinkle a generous hand of cheese and run under a broiler until they are browned and satisfied. Garnish with a small fresh thyme branch.
Notes
Any Latin grocery should have chicken legs. I buy mine from the market to Lafayette. Buy the finest Gruyere (or Comté) cheese you can find. When I do this, I make a ton of it and an extra portion and frost. Heated in a slow stove, it is the perfect food by the make.
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