homemade french onion soup

This weekend I made French onion soup for the first time ever. It was time-consuming, but I'm so glad I did!

I've been wanting to make onion soup for quite a long time; I love it. Obviously the best part is the cheesy crouton on top, but I definitely love the whole package. I can make a meal of it. Not only because I love it, but because it completely fills me up (I am weight loss surgery patient, after all!). But I don't order it very often. Mainly because I'm always completely torn about whether I want an actual meal, like a burger or something, or I want the delicious onion soup. On the one hand, ONION SOUP! On the other hand, a complete meal with leftovers to take home. The meal almost always wins. I think, too, that I just can't get away from who I am: someone who craves food variety, and has a real FOMO (fear of missing out). What if I get the soup and I really miss having the burger? What if I get the burger and it isn't good? What if they stop making burgers or onion soup? And now that my stomach is so small, I can't have a meal AND the soup. And I hate wasting food. And sometimes I don't like leftovers. *sigh* The struggle is real...

I found this recipe online and decided to give it a try: How to Make French Onion Soup. It didn't seem overly complicated, most of the cooking time is hands-off, it didn't have any non-typical onion soup ingredients, and I have pretty good luck with recipes from The Kitchn. 

I had to buy a few ingredients to make this, but it wasn't anything I won't use again: crusty bread for the croutons (got some off the day-old bread clearance rack--it's gonna get toasted and dunked anyway!); gruyere cheese, which I got on sale in the deli; brandy; and wine (I got the little four-pack so I don't waste a bottle--I'm not a wine drinker). 

I set about slicing all the onions (lots of crying was done...). They went in the pot with the melted butter and olive oil and cooked for about 15 minutes. The you add the sugar, salt and pepper and cook for about an hour.

This is about three pounds of yellow onions. Close enough!

This is what it cooks down to. For whatever reason, I can never seem to get my onions to the "dark walnut" stage of color when caramelizing. I don't know if it's the recipe, me, my stove, or what. They still tasted great, though. To this you add the flour, cook for a minute, and then add the broth and wine and simmer for at least an hour.

This is after adding the broth and wine and then simmering for a little more than an hour.

I finished it off with about 1/4 cup of brandy. Then I sliced up the bread and toasted it in the toaster oven. After popping it on top of the soup, and then topping with a couple slices of Gruyere cheese, I put the bowls on a cookie sheet and broiled until the cheese browned. This is the only thing I did differently from the recipe. The recipe says to bake the bowls of soup in the oven for a half hour and then broil to brown the cheese, but my bowls don't specifically say "oven safe" on the bottom and I didn't want to chance them breaking. Still came out just fine, though.

The results? Divine!! I typically judge French onion soup by two factors: the cheesiness and crunchiness of the crouton, and the saltiness of the soup itself. Obviously, I can control the crouton very easily, so no problem there. It was kind of crunchy-chewy, with lots of melted cheese. I was worried that the soup would be very salty, as onion soup usually is, but it wasn't salty at all. As a matter of fact, I think I could have easily doubled the salt without an issue. Since I followed the recipe and used what was called for, I just added more salt and pepper at the end.

I would totally make this again, but I think I would add at least another pound of onions. It just didn't have enough onions for me, as I typically prefer onion soup to be a bit on the chunky side. Although this was pretty time-consuming to make, it was mostly hands-off cooking time.

(And yes, one bowl completely filled me up.)

homemade turkey stock

I was on vacation from work last week. I actually had what people would call a "staycation," and a pretty productive one at that. Ick, I hate that term. "Staycation." Even though I was on vacation and stayed home, it's still a vacation in my book. Any time I don't have to be at work is a vacation.

Anyway, my plans were to go to physical therapy for my back issues, scan a ton of family photos, do some cooking, and do a little clothing shopping. I'm happy to report I did all those things! It was a great week, other than a neck problem cropping up, and even though I wasn't super productive, I rested a lot, had a leisurely week, and crossed some items off the to-do list, like dropping two more bags of clothing at Good Will.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I made a turkey. It was on my birthday, actually. I then used the carcass to make turkey stock. I had to cut the carcass up, because it was too long for my biggest pot. (As you can see, it still has a good amount of meat on it, which was used later for turkey salad.) I tossed in a bunch of vegetable scraps from my odds-and-ends bag I keep in the freezer for such occasions:  a couple scallions, some celery, celery leaves, and carrots. I also tossed in some fresh sage, parsley and rosemary from my garden, fresh onions, bay leaf, dried thyme, some peppercorns, and a little salt. I then covered it all in water and boiled it until the carcass started falling apart. There's really no set time I use. When it looks done and smells great, it's done. There's also no set recipe.  Whatever I feel like throwing in and actually have on-hand is what goes in; however, I will say that I typically use mostly the same things all the time.



Still lots of meat on that carcass!

Look at all those veggies! Everyone is going for a nice, long swim. :)

This is what I got when I was done:  five quarts of homemade, delicious turkey stock. You have no idea how good this smells (and tastes)! My intention was to freeze these jars, but apparently these canning jars are no freezer-safe; I had one casualty when doing a test freeze. I put the other four quarts into Ziploc bags and laid them flat on a cookie sheet to freeze. Kind of a bummer, because I really wanted to use the jars. I'll have to find another use for them since I have a dozen.



chicken tortilla soup

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed last week and came across a blog post by my bariatric surgeon.  I took a peek at the recipes that were posted and found this recipe for soup.

I'm not much of a soup eater.  I don't feel as though it fills me.  I used to like it when I first had surgery, because it was easy and the warmth was easy on the new stomach.  But nowadays I really have to be in the mood for it. Plus, as a gastric bypass patient, this kind of qualifies as drinking with my meal.  And that's something I'm not supposed to be doing; it can stretch out the new stomach by forcing more food through it, and it washes my food down faster, which leads to hunger faster.  I decided to make it, though, because wanted to use up some ingredients.  No, strike that.  I wanted to use ONE ingredient:  a little 4 ounce can of chopped green chilies. (I bought it at some point and never used it.  I don't even remember what recipe I wanted to make.  I have lots of stuff like that in my cabinets.) I had all the other ingredients except enchilada sauce, which was easy enough to buy. Conveniently, it used up the open carton of chicken broth haunting my fridge, as well as the black beans I was likely holding onto for another recipe I can't remember. Oh, and I finally finished up the bag of frozen corn!  OK, so maybe I had more ingredients I needed to use up.

This was super easy.  Just chop up the onion and dump everything in the crock pot.  Viola!  Dinner is ready when you get home from work.

I liked the way it tasted. Just a little spicy, but not much.  If I make it again, I might reduce the amount of broth, but that's just because I prefer something more like a stew.

If you're interested in the recipe, you can find it here:  Crock Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup

The nutritional information is posted on his website, but here it is.  Note:  This assumes 8 regular-sized portions.  Bariatric patients will likely get at least 12 out of this, depending upon how far along they are.  This recipe fills a large crock pot.

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 8
• Amount Per Serving- about 2 cups
• Calories: 168.6

• Total Fat: 2.5 g
• Cholesterol: 35.0 mg
• Sodium: 311.2 mg
• Total Carbs: 20.3 g
• Dietary Fiber: 4.2 g
• Protein: 17.4 g

Source: SparkPeople