Awesome French Onion Soup for (Brave) Dummies
(detailed instructions for some AWESOME soup)


About the recipe:

I originally got this recipe off of a cooking site, but had to modify it, and learn how to double it. I wanted to share the recipe, but since I don't measure specifically, and since I'm not the only one out there who virtually breaks into a cold sweat without their measuring spoons when trying a new recipe, I'm going to write out the super detailed, "for dummies" version, so everyone will have a pretty good chance of getting it right. I will also mention brand names, because I know brand names versus generics or other brands can change the flavor.

Most important thing about this recipe is to remember that the fewer onions you use, the stronger the broth is going to turn out. Also, if the onions are strong, the broth will definitely be weak, or if they're weak, the broth will be strong. You WILL have to modify the recipe accordingly as you cook, EVERY SINGLE TIME... because the onion flavor and size varies, but I'll give you some pointers here in the recipe that will help you figure it out.


What You'll Need:

- Your stockpot...? (for those like me who had no idea what most of the stuff in my kitchen is actually called, it's that pan that's a step up from your sauce pan, but a step below that monster, "commercial-sized" pot you could cook for a whole army in). Also you need the lid, or some random lid that will cover it for the most part.

- Yellow Onions... At least two medium sized, but as I LOVE onions, and since there are no noodles in french onion soup, I use two HUGE onions.

- Butter (real), up to around a half stick

- 2 cans (campbells) double-strength beef broth

- (Wylers) Beef bullion cubes, several

- 2 cups water

- (French's) Worcestershire sauce, 1/4th teasp.

- Pepper

- Thyme


Preparation:

I usually begin by grabbing the pan and the butter and the onions, and sitting down at the table, because chopping the onions takes forever.

1) The butter.

If you have fewer onions, or smaller onions (for those who don't really like a lot of onions or whatever), you'll need about 2 tablespoons of butter.

If you're an onion maniac and want TONS of onions, you'll need more like 3 tablespoons.

Cut your butter into a couple/few slices, and put them into the bottom of your pan.


2) The onions.

- Peel and cut your onions. You can do this pretty much any way you want, but remember that the thicker or bigger the onions, the slower they'll cook. Long thin pieces, or shorter, wider-shaped pieces... shape doesn't really matter at all, as long as they're not terribly thick AS WELL AS cut big. THIN and big (on the surface) is fine. Thick will give you crunchy onions in your soup.

- As you cut the onions, try to separate the pieces as much as possible (so they'll cook thoroughly) and put them into the pan with your butter. (Butter should be on the bottom.)

ONION LOVERS: FILL... THAT... PAN! I fill mine ALL OF THE WAY to the top of the pan with onions... all of the way to the RIM... and it's WONDERFUL. And then you don't have people complaining "Hey! You took all the onions!" So if you love onions, fill up the pan. And don't worry about "room for the broth" ... the onions deflate when they cook, and before you know it, you've got only a half a pan of onions. So just go for it, you'll be glad you did.


3) Cook the onions.

-Put the pan on the stove, turn the heat on medium-low for fewer onions, and medium heat for onion lovers who have their pan full. Cover the pan.

- Cook for 18-20 minutes, or until onions are nice and soggy. Stir about every 5-7 minutes (or "occasionally"). Basically, the most important thing here is to get the butter melted, and then get the onions buttered so they don't burn initially. After that, the steam as they cook produces enough moisture to keep them from really burning.

Onion lovers: you may need more like 25-30 minutes to get a whole pan full of onions nice and tender, but just keep cooking until they are. How long it takes doesn't really matter... unless you have to be somewhere, of course.


4) From onions to soup!

- When the onions have given up the ghost (are nice and soggy, or as tender as you want them to be in your soup), you add everything else, like this...

- pour in the water and broth

- drop in 3 beef bullion cubes for fewer onions, or start with 4 or 5 for a pan full of onions

- add 1/4th teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce

- dust lightly the surface of the broth with pepper (briefly circle the whole pan), twice

- six taps of thyme (small holes)

- Stir it all together, cook on medium heat.


5) Fixing the flavor

- let it cook for about 5-10 minutes, or until it starts to really heat up again. This is when you start to get an idea of the final flavor. Then, taste the soup.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU ARE TASTING FOR... a) over-all strength and b) the actual BEEF flavor.

The double strength broth may or may not be strong, but it does NOT really taste BEEFY. This is why you have to even have bullion cubes in the recipe when you've already got broth.

The most important thing is that your soup tastes BEEFY. If it's strong, you can always dilute it. If it's not beefy, it doesn't matter how strong the canned broth tastes, your soup will not get rave reviews. Which may be good if you're trying to chase off your in-laws or something, but... if you want good soup... you'll have to work on this part.

- If it's weak, or if the beef taste is weak (regardless of it's strength otherwise), add a bullion cube. Let it dissolve completely, and taste again. Repeat until you have a rich, beefy flavor, even if it's slightly too strong. Err on the side of it being too beefy.

-If the over-all strength is too strong after the beef flavor is fixed, add 1/4th cup of water, and taste again. Repeat until the over-all strength is good for you.

By making the beef flavor right, or even a little bit too strong BEFORE diluting it if you have to, you're making sure you end up with good, beefy flavor, even AFTER you fix the strength. I almost never have to fix the strength at all, even with 5-7 bullion cubes, with the onion lover's recipe. But in any case, first fix the beef flavor, THEN fix the strength if you have to. Only question is, "where's the beef?!" This is BEEF French Onion. You want a beef flavor you can taste under loads of cheese and french bread croutons.

AFTER FIXING THE FLAVOR, COOK SOUP TO A BOIL. Or if it's already boiling, then cook until the last bullion cube is dissolved and the flavor is fixed, and just go ahead and turn it off. Then serve. (Idiots warning: boiling soup will be hot. lol)


6) Toppings.

Well, from here on in, you're on your own, pretty much. I do not know much about making home-made croutons. Frankly, I enjoy this soup without anything but crackers. I have only observed someone else doing it, and so I can only tell you loosely what I saw, if you really want the croutons.

You can get a loaf of french bread at the store deli (or somewhere around it, usually). Cut it into slices (like toast). Butter it with spreadable butter (we used real, spreadable butter). Place them on a foil-covered cookie sheet. Dust them generously with garlic powder and optionally, a light dusting of onion powder. You could probably very lightly sprinkle some Italian Seasoning over it (find it in the spice isle in the little sprinkle cans, for those who have never heard of it before, "Italian Seasoning.") It's potent stuff though, so use sparingly. Heat the oven to 350-400, and cook until they're toasted golden.

I do not know if you would want to fix both sides of the bread, but this is what I watched a family friend do (on at least one side), and let me tell you... the results were tasty enough to eat by themselves as a snack. You could also put them in salad (which I also did).

As for the cheese for the soup, I'd use whatever white cheese I have on hand, frankly, but then I'm not really picky about it. I think we've been using Mozzarella for the most part. Melt it in the microwave or just stir it into the soup... but watch out! You will need a serious scouring pad and a lot of elbow grease to wash the dishes after melted cheese adheres to them!

 :ready-to-eat:

Banana (or just about anything else) Oatmeal Dessert... Thingies

About the recipe:

This recipe comes from the folks at the Quaker Oats company initially, as a Oatmeal Raisin Cookie recipe. But cookies are a pain, and who likes raisins anyway, right?   So we changed it.

This recipe is a favorite among our family and local friends. Normally, we make it with bananas, but you can probably make it with just about anything that goes into oatmeal. I will offer notes on variations, and especially notes for my latest, blockbuster blueberry version.

The recipe as we've modified it is not for cookies, but for dough poured into a cake pan. The result has the texture more like bread than anything else, but since it is, after all, loaded with sugars... there's been a bit of confusion on what exactly to call them. Because they're neither cookies, nor bread... nor do they really even look like cookie BARS in texture. So they look like bread, but... they'll go to your waistline like cookies... Good luck on finding a name for that.

Anyhow, whatever you call them, they're darn tasty. And here's how you do it...


What you'll need:

- Margarine (2 sticks for banana recipe, 2 1/2 sticks for blueberry recipe)

- 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar (or rather, as much brown sugar as you can force into or onto the top of a one-cup container. Mine is usually piled well over the top of the cup.)

- 1/2 cup granulated sugar (generous)

- 2 eggs

- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla (at least)

- 1 1/2 cups flour (overflowing for banana recipe, EXACT for blueberry)

- 1 teaspoon baking SODA

- OPTIONALLY FOR BANANA RECIPE ONLY... 1 teaspoon raw (NOT mixed with sugar!) cinnamon. The recipe is VERY good without, but if you get bored with the regular recipe, this adds a bit of a different flavor for something new. I recommend trying it without first, though.

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

- At LEAST 3 cups (Quaker) oats, "Quick, 1-minute" variety. You CAN use any kind, but "normal" oats (not "quick") will have to sit in the dough a few minutes to avoid the final product being too crispy. Unless you like crispy. Measure generously for banana recipe, and EXACTLY for blueberry recipe!

- Bananas, as many as you have on hand that are turning black. The peel can be totally black, and the inside can be disgustingly mushy, as long as the inside is not black, or "foamy" or otherwise looks like it has rotted more than just becoming a bit darker and squishy. They can be pretty far gone, and it's all good. I typically use about 4-6 of them, and as long as they're ONLY squishy and slightly darker yellow in color, and not anything else, I will still use them. This is when they're really sweet, for those who are going "eeeeeew!" right now.  

OR...

- Blueberries, NOT MINI!! ... 3 cups, frozen, having been thawed only about an hour, in a bowl, just sitting out.

OR... like I said, pretty much any other fruit or what have you, that you can throw in oatmeal.

- 2 bowls for mixing, one very large, and one medium/large.

- Beaters

- Cake pan (disposable ones are great for this!)


How it's done:

1) melt the butter almost completely. ESPECIALLY for the blueberry recipe, which will be much, much drier!

2) Pour butter and sugars together into the LARGEST bowl. This is your "wet stuff" bowl. Beat until creamy.

3) Add eggs and vanilla to the larger, "wet stuff" bowl. Beat well.


4) Add bananas to the "wet stuff" bowl, and beat until you virtually cannot see any traces of them (chunks) left, or as well as you can. (The chunks are nasty when cold. They are, after all, bananas well past their normally edible stage.)

OR, FOR THE BLUEBERRY RECIPE...


4) add the blueberries to the "wet stuff" bowl, however thawed or not that they are after about an hour of sitting out uncovered, and stir them in with a spoon.


5) In the other, smaller,  "DRY STUFF" bowl, combine your flour, baking soda, salt, (cinnamon, if you're using it for the banana recipe) and oats. Stir with spoon.


6) When the dry stuff is all mixed together thoroughly, dump it into the "wet stuff" bowl, and stir together until well mixed.

FOR BANANA RECIPE... the more bananas you use, the better, BUT... your batter will end up being thinner, the more you use. You do NOT want cookie dough, but you also don't want it to be runny or overly thin. If you think it is, add 1/2 cup of OATS ONLY (not flour!), to the mix, and stir it in, and repeat until it's not runny. The consistency should be kind of like pretty thick oatmeal (though these oats are going to be hard)... still pretty soft, but not soupy/drippy, OR overly solid like cookie dough.

FOR BLUEBERRY RECIPE... your dough is going to be pretty darn dry. If it is very, VERY much so, add 1/4th cup of water. Remember, I already added 1/2 stick of butter to the normal recipe for the blueberry recipe. Even so, the batter will be pretty darn dry/thick compared to the banana recipe. As long as you can mix the batter together, and get something similar to cookie dough, it should be all right. The trick here, is that as the blueberries cook, their juice will be absorbed into the dough around them, so... as it cooks it gets better.


7) Pour batter into NOT greased cookie pan, preferably glass or disposable (foil) (Both are easier than standard metal pans for clean-up purposes), and spread around. IF YOUR PAN IS SHORT HEIGHT-WISE, PUT A COOKIE SHEET UNDER THE PAN!! Dough may rise and spill over the top of short pans!

8) Cook (from a NOT pre-heated oven), 35-40 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean from the middle. If do you preheat the oven, you might want to try 30-35 minutes or so, and go from there.

9) Enjoy warm or cooled off. Can be frozen and enjoyed later. BEST IF KEPT IN YOUR FRIDGE!! Blueberry recipe may get soft and squishy if left for more than a few days, so you might want to store some in the freezer!


This recipe is great because it is obviously something you can put just about anything into, as long as it goes with oatmeal. The only thing you want to keep in mind is the texture of what you're adding. Bananas make it really wet. Half-frozen blueberries offer virtually NO moisture to the batter, thus the extra butter and water.

Another idea I wanted to try with the banana recipe, is adding walnut pieces to the mix. I'm sure that would be very good as well! (Sadly, the other person that lives here and eats it, doesn't like nuts.) Even chocolate chips might be great in the banana recipe!

We have all sorts of good recipes -- maybe if we ever get time we can post them.

In the meantime, here is my recipe for Hot Chocolate:

(1) packet hot chocolate mix
(1) cup water

Microwave the water for 1 1/2 minutes (1 minute 20 seconds if you want to be able to drink it sooner). Remove from microwave.

Mix in hot chocolate mix, and stir thoroughly. Serve hot.

Makes 1 serving.

    That's about all I know how make too.

Dulcamara,
I've just printed out your French Onion Soup recipe and will try it! thanks.

You're welcome!  :wave:

I love that recipe myself. One gets sick of paying $4-$5 for a tiny cup of it at a restaurant, only to get something even then that's not all that tasty. Often it's too salty or hardly any onions or what not... Personally, I think that recipe actually tastes better than almost any other time I have had that soup, with MAYBE one exception. So it certainly turned out to be a pretty good recipe. I LOVE this french onion soup, and many people I know who have tasted it have loved this recipe, too, so... I figured if everyone I know enjoyed it that much, it would be nice if other people could enjoy it, too.

Hope it works out for you!

Introducing....


Simply Delicious

With Catholic Samurai



Homemade Cereal

Take a bowl.
Pour cereal in the bowl
Pour milk over cereal
Place spoon in bowl
And eat.




There... that simple enough for you?

Definitely will have to write that down.

Here's another tasty recipe. I'd not made this before because I wasn't interested in boiling a whole chicken which is what the person who gave me the recipe did. But, I needed to use some canned chicken and Rotel we had here, so this was perfect. Uses lots of canned goods, so it's easy, but not so great on nutritional value.

KING RANCH CHICKEN

Ingredients
    1  large onion, chopped
    1  large green bell pepper, chopped
    2  tablespoons  vegetable oil
    2  cups  chopped cooked chicken
    1  (10 3/4-ounce) can cream of chicken soup, undiluted
    1  (10 3/4-ounce) can cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
    1  (10-ounce) can diced tomato and green chiles
    1  teaspoon  chili powder
    1/4  teaspoon  salt
    1/4  teaspoon  garlic powder
    1/4  teaspoon  pepper
    12  (6-inch) corn tortillas
    2  cups  (8 ounces) shredded Cheddar cheese, divided

Preparation
Sauté onion and bell pepper in hot oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat 5 minutes or until tender. Stir in chicken and next 7 ingredients; remove from heat.
Tear tortillas into 1-inch pieces; layer one-third of tortilla pieces in bottom of a lightly greased 13- x 9-inch baking dish. Top with one-third of chicken mixture and 2/3 cup cheese. Repeat layers twice.
Bake at 350° for 30 to 35 minutes.
Note: Freeze casserole up to 1 month, if desired. Thaw in refrigerator overnight, and bake as directed.

This pizza is tasty enough to be a great Friday recipe
(tastes good enough to eat with just cheese), especially if you mix
different cheeses. I used a "5-cheese Italian" mix.

What do you mean, Friday recipe = good enough to be "cheese only"?

What about
Black olives, green olives, red peppers, green peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, and pineapple? If you like pickled things, you could also toss on banana peppers.

True, I would miss the usual sausage, pepperoni, ham, bacon, italian sausage, hamburger, etc...

I tend to agree with my wife: cheese pizza = BORING. No need for it, even on Friday.