Yummy Malaysiana: french onion soup

french onion soup

Im firmly of the belief that no matter what ails you in the realm of the kitchen, onion soup can cure it. Never cooked before? Dont think youll be able to pull off the kind of cooking you believe you need to go to a restaurant to experience? Start with onion soup. Have only $5 to spend on dinner? Refrigerator is almost bare? Onion soup is your friend. Want your home to have a transcendent aroma bouncing off every wall, the kind thats so distracting that you dont even know or care whats on the stove, only that you must have it now? Onion soup is waiting for you.

I realize it was unfair to even make a passing reference to weepingly delicious onion soup the other day without refreshing it here. I talked up once in 2006, a lifetime ago (or several, if youre this guy) but it was a very literal recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking which benefits from some streamlining. And yet, not too much. Onion soup is a remarkably simple thing to make but when simplified too liberally Ive seen recipes that instructed you to just caramelize onions for a bit, add stock, cheese etc. the nuance that raises it to the transcend! ent leve l Ive known it to be gets lost. Julia Childs original version with the very long caramelization of onions that I beg you not to skimp on because this is all the work there really is, the slip of raw grated onion, the cheese within and on top of the soup and starting the croutons toasted hard so they dont fall apart in the soup raises the soup beyond the everyday, without making it too difficult to whip up almost any day. Which I promise will happen when you realize the staggering gap between effort and outcome that Childs onion soup manages to bridge.