kimberly ah

We finally broke the new yellow Dutch oven out of the box this week and made French onion soup for dinner Monday night. As hurricane Sandy pounded the East and the residual winds battered Chicagoland, it felt like the perfect night to slow cook some onions into caramelized, salty goodness. And, I’m proud to say, I did all of the prep work of the soup by myself. (But once you see how little effort goes into making French Onion Soup, this fact is not impressive at all.)

I’ve been wanting to make French Onion Soup for a long time now, and I suppose I could have made it in our old metal soup pot, but I bet it wouldn’t have tasted as good…there was something so perfect about making it in that sunny pot. And, although the soup takes time, the rest of the work couldn’t be any easier. You seriously just have to slice a few onions–thin slices are important, but imperfect slices are fine!–and roughly measure out the rest of the ingredients. That, and a few stirs of the pot, and you’re done!

Here are the onions in the beginning:

And after almost an hour of cooking & caramelizing:

Delicious, yes?

We used this recipe from the Smitten Kitchen. We halved the ingredients, which made about three small bowls of soup for us. It was the perfect amount (one bowl for me, two for Naoto) with a light, herby salad.

Now that we know this soup will be a part of our regular repertoire, we are adding oven proof soup bowls to our Christmas list. The only thing I would change about our first attempt is that Naoto bought this weird, domestic-made “Gruyere” cheese…to get heavenly results, a good cheese is crucial to this soup…especially if the soup is secondary to the cheese, as it is for me! And, we need a little bit more practice using our broiler before I feel confident that we won’t burn the apartment down…little details…