I don’t know about you, but I am a summer girl at heart. Anything and everything warm…I am a fan. So today with the cold, rainy weather, I thought why not make some soup to warm my insides up? Thinking of this throughout my whole Social Psychology class, I went right to the Pinterest app on my phone as soon as I got out at 10:00 am to my Soups board (a.k.a. my favorite board).

I found 2 recipes that I really wanted to try: a vegetable tortellini soup and French Onion. I was planning to make both soups at once but then I realized that I only had one soup pan large enough… I ended up making French Onion just because I couldn’t resist the four pounds on onions calling my name to chop and caramelize.

SO first thing I did was head over to Dash’s (one of my favorite local grocery stores) and pick up my needed items.

I followed this Pinterest link for my recipe: French Onion Soup!

• 1/4 cup butter **
• 4 pounds onions, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped (or THE MORE THE BETTER) **
• 1 teaspoon thyme, chopped ( I eyeballed this much & used dryed thyme) **
  
• 1/4 cup flour (optional *see below)
• 1 cup red wine (or beef or vegetable broth + 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar) **
• 3 cups beef or vegetable broth
• 2 bay leaves **
• salt and pepper **

** indicates items I already had

Directions

1. Melt the butter in a large sauce pan over medium-low heat, add the onions and cook slowly at low with the lid on until golden brown and caramelized, about 2-3 hours, stirring every 15 minutes.
2. Raise the heat to medium, add the garlic and thyme and saute about a minute.
3. Add the wine.
4. Add the broth and bay leaves, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

My Thoughts on this Recipe:

This was my first time making this kind of soup, so I was happy when it turned out pretty decent.

The original recipe calls for adding flour to the onion once they are caramelized, however I don’t see what that did for the soup. My end result just had clumps of flour in it that kind of turned into dough in the broth. The flour also made the broth murky and thick, which was not what I was going for. I would have rather liked a thin, clear, slurp-able broth, but it wasn’t terrible. Also I didn’t have any red wine on hand, so I mixed the balsamic and broth. I probably would try for the wine next time..

I didn’t feel like being fancy and broiling Italian bread in my oven, so i opted for an open, one slice grilled cheese instead which was just as good.

Overall, I give my version of this soup a 3 out of 5. Could have been better but still decent.

[Photo courtesy of Flickr / adactio]