More About (French) Onion Soup Than You Need To Know

Welcome Friends welcome back to the kitchen um today I am dead tired we just got back from the Glenn and Friends trip to Japan I'm tired from the trip I'm jet lagged from the trip went to the grocery store and it's uh it's kind of mid October onions are on sale about this time every year you can get a big 10 lb bag of onions where live used to be you'd get it for a dollar uh I paid $2.99 for a 10 lb bag of potato 10 lb bag of onions today um and I wanted to make onion soup I've been looking back at old recipe videos that we've done and one of the things that uh that I did a long time ago was an onion and stout soup that I absolutely love and I thought you know what I'd like to do something maybe a little bit more traditional do a more traditional french onion soup um so I've got a a dutch oven here warming it up and I've got some butter I'm going to put the butter in and let that melt now of course the French don't call it french onion soup just like the French don't call it French toast um they refer to it as soup Al um but really what we refer to as french onion soup is soup alono gratin the gratin is the important part that's the cheese on top that's the part that really when people talk about French onion soup that's what they refer to so I got the onions I'm doing the research I'm pulling out all of my old books if you want to learn about French cooking this is larus um my copy is from 1938 my copy is in French I would suggest that if you want to learn about French cooking this is the book you need to get and you need to get one of the printings from the 1930s and ultimately you need to get it in French um I've looked at the French copies I've looked at the English copies the English translations are imperfect not that if you don't speak French your translations are going to be any better but you've got a better chance if you're working from the original um and Alex French Guy cooking uh did a video on this uh in his mother's sauce series um you should go back and watch that on his channel and so this is onion soup so at its core is onions and I've got uh just over eight cups of sliced onions here and I've thrown some shalots on top if I hadn't been doing this as sort of a a a budget soup trying to use the onions that are on sale and these onions um that I got on sale are last year's onions so they're from last year's harvest the grocery stores or the suppliers or the or the uh or the vegetable markets trying to get you rid of last year's onions they were a little bit Rough Around the Edges um where was I going with that at its core historically onion soups are found in pretty much every Cuisine every Regional Cuisine of Europe um going way back onions were easily grown easily available inexpensive and making this type of soup was a really inexpensive way for people to to eat um this is a budget meal going way back sometime in the 1940s 1950s it became something fancy um and the recipes changed and that's really what I want to talk about in today's video is how the recipes change um if you look at this book uh this is La cuiser Bourgeois this is from 1759 and there is an onion soup recipe in it and the onion soup recipe in this book is vastly different than a contemporary 2023 French onion soup recipe that you would find on YouTube Google french onion soup on YouTube and you're going to come up with a whole bunch of recipes one of the things that I I know from uh my collection of old cookbooks is the more ingredients in a recipe the farther it is from the origin the farther it is from the starting point the farther it is from traditional if it's got a whole bunch of ingredients it's not the original recipe and that certainly plays out here um in the 1938 larus very basic very basic recipe onions butter salt and stock um but not even this dark brown stock so let's talk about that next uh first let's deal with the onions so the onions are in the pot medium heat I'm going to put the lid on and I'm going to let these go probably 25 or 30 minutes no sugar none of the older traditional recipes U none of the pre-World War II recipes for onion soup contain sugar the onions are sweet enough um the salt is going to help draw out some of the liquid and season the soup you don't need the sugar you don't need the sweetness cuz the onions are going to bring it the sugar does help draw out some liquid so that the onions uh Brown a little bit quicker but you don't need to do it just just use a little bit of patience this is also the point in most videos where people will leave a comment down below that if you put baking soda in they will Brown faster they will definitely they will um I'm not a fan of that for this type of soup because I don't like what the baking soda does to the onions it turns them really into mush and you don't you can't recognize that you're dealing with onions I still want to know that there's onions in the soup so I don't do it for this if I was making onion jam and I was in a thyme Jam I would put in the baking soda there is a there is a use case for it for me personally not in this case we get to the uh to the stock in these older books the stock that they're asking for is a white stock or a second stock and what I mean by second stock or white stock uh a white stock is you don't Brown the bones you just boil the bones or simmer the bones in water and you pour off the stock you get the flavor but you don't get this dark deep brown color a second stock which is what most of these older books call for is after you've poured off that first amount of water you refill the pot with the Bones still in it you refill the pot and you simmer it for a second time that second stock has a very light flavor um very delicate flavor and so when you use that in an onion soup as they're asking for you're not adding a lot of beef flavor what you're adding um is is a supporting role to the onions you're elevating the onions without overpowering the onions and in these older books they don't specify whether it's beef ve or chicken They Don't Really Care it's whatever you've got bubbling on the back burner of your stove is what you're going to use remember this starts out as a peasant budget meal so times change tastes change the 1950s come along and we start using these deeper darker more richer stocks I'm using it today because that's what I grew up tasting and eating and it tastes right to me so I'm going to continue to use it and this is how you know tastes change recipes over time and sort of most of what we think of as traditional recipes really happens post World War II okay so half an hour and the onions are pretty much what I expected still a long way to go but you don't want to turn up the heat the biggest mistake you can make is to turn the heat too high and burn the onions you don't want that to happen you want to go slow slow and steady wins the day so the lid back on those are probably another hour away from being done now in this Dutch oven in the oven at 250° Let It Go uh nice consistent even heat you'll get good Browning you won't overheat them you won't burn them you won't you know another ways to do it in a crock pot eight hours on on high in a crockpot great results uh another way to do it is in an electric skillet or electric Frying Pan um if you still have one of those I don't know do they still sell those you probably have one if your mother had one you probably have one you can dial in the heat exactly nice even heat lid on and you're not going to worry about about burning them next we're going to make the Crouton um and I guess while I'm cutting up the bread for the croutons I should talk about Julia Child she's got a great recipe in this in this cookbook her recipe uses vermouth and and conac or brandy it's essentially the same recipe as I'm doing today except I'm not going to use vermouth conac or brandy sometimes I use wine um I've noticed in a lot of contemporary recipes if you look you know at recipes of people doing it today they'll add red wine or tomato I if you like it I mean I'm not you know me I'm not someone who tells you what to do or what not to do for me personally I find that red wine or or tomatoes in this recipe takes away from the onion they start to overpower the flavor that you're getting from the onion and traditionally uh this is a recipe that celebrates a humble ingredient which is the onion I want the onion flavor to come through if I use wine and I may use a splash of wine today I'll use a white wine because white wine just sort of elevates the other the other flavors without taking over to me red wine overpowers and I'm already using a really brown beef stock which is a little bit overpowering and I don't want to risk it with some red wine if you want to use red wine go right ahead if you don't want to cook with wine rest assured it's going to taste great because none of these recipes from before World War II use wine or vermouth or conac or any of that it's just a celebration of of the onion now I'm going to cut these up sliced them and I'm going to cut them in half again cut them into quarters really rough you don't have to be too careful with it so the Crouton is one of those places where uh contemporary recipes differ quite a bit uh you see people a lot of times cutting a piece of French bread or a couple of pieces of French bread and putting them in untoasted on top of the soup and then putting the putting the cheese on top works great I find that it gets a little bit mushy for my taste but that's just me that's the way you want to do it go right ahead other people will take again the Crouton toast it put it ho on top put the cheese on top again if that's the way you want to do it then that's the way you can do it the if you go way back though what you're looking at is uh toasted croutons in the bottom of of the serving dish whether it be single servings or a large terine the soup on top of that a couple of more croutons on top of the soup and then the cheese on top of that that's what you find in these very old recipes um having smaller pieces of bread broken up on top and inside the soup the smaller bread or toast in the bottom of the of the soup uh brings body instead of adding flour and a rue to thicken it the bread thickens it from the bottom and having smaller pieces on top makes it easier to eat so I always kind of go with the smaller pieces on top and the bread in the bottom to thicken it if you don't want to put the bread in the bottom to thicken it you could definitely use a r um larus in his recipe not really a recipe that's that's the thing about this book there aren't really reci he describes how to make a recipe or how to cook it he describes the method rather than the exact um he talks about using flour to thicken it and into a 350° oven until they are toasty croutons are done they're out of the oven they're waiting for about the first hour of cooking these onions I had the lid on I've taken the lid off at this point uh this is where I want to drive off the moisture and finish that Browning I want to get them a deep golden brown time to start shredding the cheese now uh now the cheese that's normally asked for is Swiss or Maller but as you can see I got Grier I'm sure the package said M and taller at the grocery store I don't know how it turned into guur a by the time I got home anyway use a cheese that you like that's really what it comes down to uh one of the things I really love about cooking from older cookbooks is that they're not specific they don't they don't tell you that you have to use a specific kind of of ingredient or a specific type of cheese or vegetable or they really leave it open to you as the person cooking to decide what you want to use and so I often see this recipe made with with m& to Swiss cheese that is sort of the uh that is the de facto cheese that's used in most instances Julia uh brings up that you know you could use also a Parmesan which I think would be really good in this that would bring a a really good flavor although I wouldn't use parm I'd use peino because I like peino better than parm I think it brings a better flavor to most things that I cook with it you want a melty cheese you want a melty cheese and if you're doing this on a budget and you're you're really celebrating the onion and doing it on a budget uh use the cheese that you can afford or the one that you've got in your house onions are getting close I stir them often make sure they don't stick to the bottom make sure they're not burning and Grate this cheese the onions are really close I think I could probably take them a little bit farther um you always run the risk of going too far and it's a fine line between getting them just right and and burning them to the bottom of the pot and I I kind of don't want to get there you could add a little bit more water cuz most of the moisture at this point has been driven off add a little bit more water that gives you a little bit more time to to sort of achieve that Browning a little bit again it's kind of iffy but I'm going to go with this now I am going to add white wine so let's get this open and so white wine doesn't really appear in any of these super traditional recipes um in these older books doesn't appear in there at all but I like what it brings to the flavor if you are someone who wants to use red wine because you you believe that red wine must be used if you're using beef stock or or beef that that's the only combination that that works give what one a shot just one once give it a shot just once I think you might be surprised um at how well it works together and in goes the beef stock now I started out with a little over nine cups of sliced onions um in the classical texts the ratio seems to be uh equal amount by volume of uncooked onion and liquid or stock that that plays out into the future into what Julet child says and what most recipes today say I used six cups of stock um because I really like the onion flavor the onion flavor is important to me I like what it what it I want to taste the onion so I'm a little light on the stock and what I've made here today is notable or the recipe that I made today or the version of this recipe that I made today is what it doesn't contain um I followed more closely what's in the older text so there's no time there's no bay leaf um it's just salt and pepper onion and stock I add a little bit of white wine that's my concession to to to this whole thing I like what the white wine brings the soup is done at this point so that is onion soup um you can put that in the fridge forget about it for a couple of days so if you're going to serve this for a dinner party this is make aead so you don't have to worry about on the day of the party cooking down the onions and the time that it takes to do all of that you can do that ahead of time and quite honestly after 2 or three days in the fridge it's going to taste better or at least you're going to think that it tastes better I don't know if it actually does um you can also at this point freeze that and so when you come home from from work one day and you're looking for something fast and Hearty and and warming pull it out of the freezer microwave it and then to thaw it out and then put put it into your Crocs and cook it from there in the oven so I'm putting some croutons in the bottom of each of these Crocs Ladle in some soup some more croutons on top and then the cheese last of the cheese now the oven is preheated to 450° I'm not going to use the broiler um you can use the broiler broil it from the top down watch it very carefully make sure that the cheese doesn't burn 450° for 15 or 20 minutes is going to give you the same effect and you're not not going to have to watch it as closely you still have to watch it just not as closely so in they go hey friends hey Glenn hey Jules where did you find those balls they were deep deep deep deep in the equipment room the things in our collection um yeah it's like a it's like a ' 70s dinner party here now we haven't fond de too just checking oh you've been to a 70s dinner party I think I did go to a few um so the bowls are still hot I got that impression I'm going pull one up I thought you were going to give me one too yeah there we go can I se the soup in is just as hot they've been out of the oven for about 10 minutes so that they're not volcanic they were really cheese may still very well be volcanic yeah I'm assuming there's french onion soup under it is based on the bowl the cheese and the Crouton yes it is all of those things okay so oh oh you got a lot of crew in there yeah you really stuff those in oh no that looks too hot still your face suggests that it is too hot still so take a moment talk talk to your friends but it's so good it is so good okay good enough to sacrifice my most parts for burning them off yeah maybe not so my my tip is I made it I made soup Al very close to you know what's written in these older books if your palette isn't used to that that's pretty good bring it up to date and use all of the other tricks that people use um a little bit of thy when you're when you're cooking down the onions a bay leaf when you're cooking down the onions actually like this one a little better I'm you know yeah say I think I like this better than the more traditional version or the the version I'm used to the the newer version yeah and so you know red wine if you want to use red wine I used white you could definitely put in some cognac or Brandy at the end that would give it a little bit of a boost of flavor I was trying to figure out how to eat my cheese gracefully and made it complete disaster um oops if you don't want to cook with wine or alcohol don't you don't have to but the wine might be why it tastes good uh there is a case to be made in old French cooking for this this is veru it's exactly what it says it's green juice veru it's it's made from unripe grapes it's highly acidic there's no sweetness it's not fermented so there's no alcohol they used it a lot in in soups in the in the 17 and 1800s and if you can get it that would be a great addition to this soup it it with the wine in in Li of the wine okay just checking just checking and the other thing is I think it's so much better with tiny croutons than that ridiculous piece of bread I shouldn't say sort of gives away what I think about the piece of bread on top when I think it's funny you think these are tiny croutons broken up croutons instead of the giant piece of bread because a giant piece of bread can often times be hard to cut through and yeah you're you're doing that having the smaller croutons it's a hard enough dish to eat gracefully yes yeah it's something you uh may not choose on a first meeting no or business meeting or something so the smaller croutons make it make it easier to eat it's a bit messy if you learn one thing from any of my cooking videos It's Do Your Own Thing Do Your Own Thing Really you're cooking you're cooking for yourself you need to please your pallette it's great to understand where a recipe came from but you should be able to make changes in your own home to make it suit your palette suit your needs suit your budget really make it your own it's a method it's not a recipe thanks for stopping by see you again soon it's so sweet the onions are so sweet yeah but I think I don't know what it is about that I like that makes me like it better there's nothing in it maybe that's it there's nothing in it it's just onion maybe it's a wine onion stock and and and wine and there wasn't even that much wine in it I just I probably only put about 1 qu cup well I don't know maybe I just don't like all the other all the other flavors all the other stuff it is onion soup what you're supposed to taste is onion okay

Channel: Glen And Friends Cooking

Views: 72,947

Keywords: Glen And Friends Cooking, historical cooking, canadian cooking show, canadian cooks, french onion soup recipe, french onion soup recipe without wine, glen cook, cooking with glen, glen & friends cooking, how to make french onion soup, onion soup recipe, onion soup, easy french onion soup, onion soup gratinee, how to cook french onion soup, how to make onion soup, history of french onion soup, ultimate french onion soup, authentic french onion soup, homemade french onion soup

Id: BoMdJb6ZsWU

Length: 24min 9sec (1449 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023