Category Archives: Soups/Stews/Salads

Weekend Recap: July 19-21

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Hey guys! Sorry about the delay in getting this out. I wasn’t quite sure when I was going to have time to write everything up so I figured a recap of this past weekend, with several recipes, would be a good idea.

Friday night started out with leftover Chicken Soup with Noodles. There was an SF GIANTS game on we were watching that evening and cooking time got away from me. Fortunately I try to keep something good in the freezer for just these types of nights. It definitely hit the spot with a red leaf lettuce salad on the side that had an apple cider bacon vinaigrette for the dressing.

chicken_soup_noodles

Saturday morning had me wanting to either make a big breakfast casserole, it will happen, or something with the pint of blueberries I had. After mulling it over I decided a Blueberry Sour Cream Coffeecake would be a good idea. This is one time that I’m not going to share that recipe, I could have been better and it look way too much like the Mixed Berry Cobbler I recently made. I will come up with something worthy of sharing, I promise.

mixed_berry_cobbler_collage

Saturday evening I grilled a meaty half-rack of Baby Back ribs, topped them off with an Apple Chipotle BBQ Sauce, and made Cheater Baked Beans. We had salad left over from the night before so veggies were covered. In fact, the vinaigrette from the night before was better after sitting overnight. And the BBQ sauce also had overnight for all the flavors to marry as I made it on Friday, a very good move indeed.

apple_chipotle_bbq

Sunday was an easy cooking day. I had originally planned on doing roasted Cornish game hen, mashed potatoes, and some sort of veggie. There were a few preparations in store for that hen so I got the first on underway which was an apple juice brine.

brine_game_hen

My theory on brining is that pork and poultry can always benefit from some sort of brining or injecting, both types of protein are usually very bland on their own and they need flavor help. This is why I brine chicken when I can, wings are the exception, and I like to brine pork chops and pork tenderloin. I also brine my turkeys at Thanksgiving, or any other time of year for that matter. I will do a post about roasting the game hen, that is dinner tonight. Enjoy!

Easy Greek Pasta Salad

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Who doesn’t love a good cold pasta salad, especially in the summer and more especially one that won’t go bad if left out for a while. This isn’t a mayo-based salad so you’re safe.

easy_greek_pasta_salad

Thanks to our sister-in-law, Dianne, I discovered a really easy pasta salad that used whatever favorite vinegar based dressing you preferred as the liquid for the salad. I believe she used an Italian that was really good when mixed up with the pasta and the cheese and the veggies … YUM!

Recipe and full story here.

French Onion Soup

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French onion soup is absolutely fabulous … just sayin’. The recipe I started with many years ago came from James Peterson’s ‘Splendid Soups’ cookbook, I think it was 2004 or 2005. Back in those days I slaved over a pot of onions for hours trying to get the perfect caramelization and making sure nothing burned. Until one day, one day that changed my soup making life forever. I opened up my new, autographed by Christopher Kimball, America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook. It’s the first 10 years of the shows recipes compiled into a rather large, GORGEOUS, cookbook. It was in the pages of this that I discovered THE secret to “low and slow” caramelized onions … let the oven do the work for you and get off your feet.

The recipe below is my version based on a hybrid of the two cookbooks listed above, and tried and true testing and tasting.

TIPS:

  • Use sweet onions – onions have a lot of sugars already but sweet ones caramelize the best. I use either Maui sweets or Peru sweets. Vidalia onions are particularly sweet and come from the South.
  • You can use chicken or beef broth, or a combination of both. When making broth we prefer to use chicken and/or beef base rather than cubes or powder.
  • In my opinion, the only alcohol that should touch French onion soup is a good dry sherry such as Cutty Sark in the burlap sack. Sherry has a wonderfully distinct sweetness that adds to the caramel flavor of the onions and plays off the thyme really well. Add a pinch of kosher salt and you have a perfect marriage.

french_onion_collage

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French Onion Soup
Author: 
Recipe type: Soup
Cuisine: French
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 4-6
 
This is by far the best French onion soup I have ever had outside of a restaurant, maybe the best ever.
Ingredients
  • 4-6 tbls unsalted butter
  • 5 lbs of sweet onions cut in half and sliced ¼" thick lengthwise
  • Healthy pinch of kosher salt
  • 2 cups of beef broth for deglazing
  • ½-2/3 cup dry sherry
  • 8 cups of beef broth
  • 6 sprigs of fresh thyme tied together with kitchen twine, or use 3-4 tsp of dried thyme
  • 1 bay leaf
  • Salt and ground black pepper to taste
  • 1 baguette French bread cut into ½" slices and toasted on a baking sheet for 10 minutes in a 400° oven
  • Grated Gruyere cheese
Instructions
  1. Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat to 400°.
  2. Liberally spray a large dutch oven with a lid with non-stick cooking spray. Cut butter into large pieces and place in the bottom of the dutch oven.
  3. Place sliced onions on top of the butter pieces, spray lid to dutch oven with non-stick cooking spray and place on dutch oven to cover. If the lid doesn't fit tightly that's okay, the onions will break down and the lid will drop into place on its own.
  4. Put pot into oven and cook with lid on for one hour. The onions will start to break down and release their liquid. Remove the pot from the oven and stir onions, making sure to scrape down the sides and bottom. Put pot back into the oven for 1 hour with lid slightly cracked to allow steam to escape and the onions to break down and caramelize. Stir onions and scrape down sides and bottom, put pot back into oven for 1 more hour with the lid slightly cracked.
  5. Take pot out of the oven and place over medium-high heat on the stove. Continue cooking the onions, stirring frequently scraping the sides and bottom until liquid evaporates and onions continue to brown, roughly 20 minutes or so. Reduce heat if onions are browning too fast.
  6. Use two cups of beef broth, ½ cup at a time until completely evaporated, to deglaze the pan and dissolve any brown bits that have collected on the sides and bottom of pot. This takes another 20 minutes or so.
  7. Add dry sherry and cook, stirring frequently, until the sherry evaporates, about 5-7 minutes.
  8. Stir in 8 cups of beef broth, add thyme, bay leaf, and salt/pepper. Scrape down sides and bottom of pot to remove any final brown bits, increase heat to high and bring to a simmer. Decrease the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove thyme sprigs and bay leaf, discard, then taste to adjust salt and pepper.
  9. Ladle soup into bowls and place toasted baguette slices on top of soup, top with a healthy amount of grated Gruyere cheese and put bowls on a baking sheet. Place under a broiler for 5 minutes or so until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown.