For her demo, Chef Amanda wanted to show how to make one of her favorite classic restaurant dishes that people do not typically make at home, a classic French Onion Soup. She also taught several techniques during the demo.
Explaining Recipe
Chef Amanda Freitag’s Tips
Use simple Spanish onions to make the soup. They are sweet, inexpensive, and have lots of flavors. Remember to season as you go; Chef Amanda likes to use kosher salt. Onions have a lot of natural sugar, and adding kosher salt helps bring out their flavor and liquid. Her best measuring tool; her hand. Use olive oil first, then butter, because you do not want the butter to burn. Use unsalted butter for savory cooking so that you can control the salt content level. Salted butter can be used for baking. Dried spices are more powerful than fresh spices, which are lighter in flavor, so use more fresh spices than when using dried spices. Although she uses beef stock for this recipe, you could make it vegetarian by using vegetable stock instead.
Ingredients
Large Spanish Onion, peeled
Kosher Salt
EVOO
Butter
Flour
Thyme (optional)
Beef Stock
Sherry, which provides the classis flavor in French Onion Soup
Sliced Baguette
Gruyere Cheese, or whatever cheese you have or prefer (mozzarella, cheddar, a mix of cheeses, Parmesan)
Oven-safe crock to hold the soup, and the baguette cheese crouton
Method: Remove the core of the onion, then slice lengthwise into long slices, and set aside.
Adding cut onions
Heat your pan. Add some olive oil. When oil starts to smoke, then add the onions a little at a time so they can sweat and caramelize. Note: when you add the onions to the pan it will lower the heat, which is why you add the onions a little at a time. Do not stir the onions, let them cook and start to caramelize. Then add more onions to the pan and remember to taste and season the onions as they cook. If something starts to stick, it prevents even cooking. The browned bits that stick to the pan are called “fond” which have lots of flavor, so stir them into the onions.
The next step is to create a roux of unsalted butter and flour. Blond roux is the classic roux and is pale golden in color. (Note: New Orleans cooking uses a deeper, darker roux which is obtained by cooking the roux longer to bring out more intense flavors.)
Always good to sample
After creating the roux and adding it to the onions, Chef Amanda said that you could stop now and keep them in the refrigerator and use them later to create your soup, or use them on sandwiches or steak, as caramelized onions are a great base.
Grating cheese
Next is deglazing the pan with the Sherry, then add as much beef stock as you like and cook over lower heat for 30-60 minutes until you achieve the flavor you want. Add more or less beef stock depending on how thick you want your soup. Add thyme (optional).
Adding cheese
Preheat oven.
Cut a baguette slice on the diagonal to fit the size of your crock. If needed, cut two slices to fit the size of the crock. Toast your baguette slices and set aside. Fill your crock(s) with the soup, top with the toasted baguette and add the shredded Gruyere and place the crock(s) in the oven until the cheese is melted and golden brown.
YUM YUM!!
Chef Amanda wrote a cookbook between restaurant jobs, called The Chef Next Door: A Pro Chef’s Recipes for Fun, Fearless Home Cooking, as she wants to make cooking approachable for home chefs.
Until next time, cheers and Bon Appetit!
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Chef Amanda Freitag
Website: https://www.amandafreitag.com/
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