An onion soup, French or otherwise

There had been a discussion on the www.wildfood.info website about caremalisation of onions for a onion soup in a slow cooker, I had never tried this so arriving back from an outing (boys weekend). I had followed this while away (the hotel complex had a full PC suite with full www connection and free) and while out on Saturday happened upon the Saturday market in Sudenburg, this is a not one of the most exciting sectors of Magdeburg.


But I came away with a small sack of onions and 2 kg of soup bones and breast, I think the rest of the lads did find it a little strange, touched their heads the forefinger and said "Die Spinnen die Briten"! (A saying from Asterix and Oberlix).

We had a fridge in our apartment, very nice indeed 3 double bedrooms and full lkitchen and living room with Sat Tele. I think that during the summer and school holidays these are family apartments (we had all inclusive). We had arrived on the Sambazug, this is a fantastic way to start your weekend, these weekends are done in the main for kegel, football clubs etc. The Sambazug has a bar and a dance compartment and it collects the weekend jolliers along the route, before eventually arriving at the Magdeburg Hbf (Main station).

But that has little or nothing to do with my onion soup other than that is where I got my ingredients and am now thought more of a crack-pot than before.

Ingredients.

2kg of onions
90-100g of butter
2 tablespoons of oil (neutral vegetable)
2 teaspoons of herbal sea salt (if you have any, if not table salt will do, at a pinch LoL)
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
a few sprigs of thyme
1 (level) teaspoon mustard powder
Fresh ground pepper to taste
Enough good beef stock to bring it to the consistancy that you wish (see below for recipe)

Caramelising the onions.

So on Sunday afternoon, I got home, unpacked my case and started to peel the onions, out came the moulinette and I shredded the onions into the base of my Cuisinart 6.5ltr slow cooker, I had put some oil into the base along with half of the butter (45g), I then picked some thyme added that along with some herbal sea salt from the Ile de Noirmoutier that I had got from the saline’s of Vendée last year. A sprinkling of brown sugar on top, the rest of the butter, the lid on and the SC switched on low and the timer onto 10 hours.



The onions and the moulinette



a bowl full of shredded onions

Adding the Sel de Mer with herbs

Topped with butter and thyme, lid on and leave to caramelise down.

Making the beef stock

I fried the beef bones before transfering to the oven to roast along with a browned onion, halved and the skin still on.

I sliced the white of a large leek a couple of carrots, some parsley stalks and teaspoon of pepper corns, put these into my pressure cooker. On top of this went the roasted bones and a slice of shin (the pressure cooker was pretty full) I poured 300ml of vegetable stock  over this and filled up with cold water, brought to the boil and skimmed, I did this at regular intervals, then put the lid on, brought up to blood and cooked for 1.5 hour. Cooled and left over night.



Giving the beef bones a quick brown along with the onion halves



The bones and onion halves into a roasting pan and into the oven



The leek, carrots, parsley stalks and a slice of leg



top up with water and add the herbs



pour in 300ml of vegetable stock (this one should be before the last photo)





Heat and when it comes to a rolling boil skim the scum as it rises to the top



Next day I decided that the onions could do with a little more browning so I switched the SC on for another 2 hours.


The final caramelised onions



Next morning I took the hardened dripping from the top of the cold stock and poured it all through a strainer, though I did make a nice beef sandwich with some of the shin meat, it had lost most of its flavour as it was meant to.

Remove the hardened dripping when cold

I next put the stock into a clean pot and added some more beef breast as I was also going to make some beef soup for the freezer. I boiled this up and lowered the heat allowing to simmer, skimming the scum off as it came to the top.

Making the soup

I washed the Pressure cooker and added the caramelised onions to the bottom, poured on a glass of Pinot Grigio (I happened to have a half a bottle in the fridge, I don't anymore) and let the alcohol boil off.

I slowly added the hot beef stock from the pot bubbling next to it; I now added a good bit of pepper and a 1/2 teaspoon of mustard powder (I will see later if it can take a bit more) (note, it did;-)).

I now had a wonderful Onion soup and a fantastic Beef soup. I fried a slice of sour dough rye bread in a little goose fat until crisp, piled it with a topping of Edam and Parmasan, quickly under the grill to melt a little and floated this on top of the soup.

Boy did it taste good and I found a use for the remainder of the pinot grigio

N.B. The soup can be made as thick or as thin as you wish the choice is yours, also the caramelisation of the onions can be done on top of the stove over a low heat, but in this case I wanted to see if they could be done successfully in the slow cooker. The 2 kg reduced down quite considerably (I did not weigh it afterwards and if the truth be known I didn't weigh it before, the 2kg  was a bit of a guess).

The quality of the beef stock makes all of the difference and it is really worth while making your own and concentrating it down.The use of the pressure cooker did speed up the making of stock and by adding another load of beef breast to the clarfied stock made this even more flavoursome. After making the onion soup, I stripped the breast meat of fat, gristle, sinus, fried a shredded leek and 2 carrots in a little oil, added this to the remainder of the stock and cooked for a few minutes, then added the breast meat and that was another smashing soup for the freezer. (I had to thin it down with water as the concentation had made it really powerful).

Here is a link to friend of ours website with his classic French Onion soup recipe.

http://souvigne.pagesperso-orange.fr/recipes/start230.htm

If your ever at a loss for a recipe, try having a look at Ians website (he also does a fantastic B&B, well worth a visit, it is one of the best in France (I would actually say the best that I have had the pleasure to stay at).

I would also like to thank the wildfood board members for sending me on this exploration into the unknown, it's always warming when something you have never tried before actually works!