Onion soup, worth all those tears

If someone would have told me a few years ago that one day I will be cooking, let alone eating onion soup, I would laugh them out. I literally despised anything with onion or garlic, because of the bitter taste they had…yukyukyuk. But somehow, little by little I started to use onion and garlic in the dishes I make (maybe one of the reasons is that J is a huge fan of them) and guess what, I have started to like them. Even that much that I prepared onion soup.

Well, it was J birthday as well and he deserved a treat and onion soup was something he would like, that’s for sure. Although I must say, somewhere between slicing the onions when I literally cried because it was so painful for my eyes, I already thought the hell with that, Im going to make a creamy potato soup. But Im a strong girl. I got over it, chopped all the onions and prepared the soup. Still, if anyone can tell me how to chop the onions and not cry at the same time, I would be very grateful.

Now, back to the soup. You’ll get enough for 5-6 servings:

700 g onions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
50 g butter
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ tbsp sugar
1.2 litres beef stock
275 ml dry white wine
salt, black pepper and thyme (optional)

# First of all do all the chopping. As said, it was painful, at least for my eyes, but…I did not know any other way. And the good thing is that after that it goes much easier!

# Place the saucepan on a high heat and melt the oil together with butter. When this is very hot, add the onions, crushed garlic and sugar, and keep turning them at high heat for about 5-6 minutes. 

# Reduce the heat to its lowest and leave the onions to carry on cooking for about 45 minutes, by which the onions have softened.

# Pour in the stock and white wine, season with salt and pepper (and thyme, if you like the taste) and stir well. As soon as it all comes up to simmering point, turn down the heat to its lowest again and leave it cook uncovered for about 1 hour.

While soup is simmering, make the croutons. You’ll need:

25 cm long baguette, cut into cubes

1 tbsp olive oil

1-2 garlic glove, crushed

# Drizzle the olive oil on to a baking-sheet, add crushed garlic and spread the oil and garlic all over the baking sheet.

# Place the bread slices on top of the oil, turn them over so that each cube gets lightly coated with the oil.

# Bake at 180 degrees C until crunchy (for about 20-25 minutes).

All this can be done in advance - both croutons and soup will stay covered in a fridge for at least 2 days. Keep in mind though that when you’re ready to serve the soup, bring it back up to simmering point and taste to check for seasoning.

The traditional way of serving onion soup is something like that - place hot soup into oven-proof dishes, top with croutons and grated cheese and place the dishes in the hot oven until cheese is bubbling. I don’t have oven-proof soup bowls, so I just topped the soup with croutuns and sprinkled with some grated cheese. The soup was very hot, so the cheese started melting immediately anyway.

J was happy and surprised. And even I enjoyhed those slowly cooked, caramelised onions that turned mellow and sweet…lovely dish, if only it didn’t take so much time to prepare…and of course, if only it wasn’t so painful for my eyes.

Creamy soup with potato chunks - a compromise

Since Christmas, when we got a food processor, I have prepared many different creamy soups. I very much like their rich and creamy flavour and it is so easy to make them - just cook the vegetables until tender in broth, purée and serve. You can finish the soup by adding cream, milk or cream cheese, to make it even more rich and moist. But you can actually prepare a silky smooth soup using only water, especially if you have a blender (not a food processor) at your disposal.

So, anyhow, I am a fan of creamy soups, and J is not that much. He prefers a soup with chunks. So I tried to prepare a compromise solution, something like this creamy broccoli soup was. I bet there is an easier way of doing this kind of soup cause I felt like it was weird to cook vegetables differently in two saucepans…but I did not know what else to do…so in case you have any ideas how to prepare a chunky-creamy soup in a more simple manner, let me know. In the meantime, I will tell you how it is possible to prepare two bowls of soup from the following ingredients:

300 g broccoli stalks (you might want to use the broccoli florets to prepare this salad)

2 potatoes

1-2 garlic gloves

chicken broth

4 slices of bacon

white pepper, salt, chili powder

50-100 ml milk

some butter

 

# First of all, wash and peel the potatoes, also wash broccoli stalks and chop everything.

# In a saucepan, melt butter and sauté crushed garlic for a few minutes. Butter adds richness which I like more than the fruity note olive oil provides (but you are welcome to sauté garlic in oil as well).

# After a few minutes of sautéing, place chopped broccoli stalks over the garlic and cover barely with chicken broth.

# At the same time place potato chunks into another saucepan, also cover barely with chicken broth. Boil both vegetables for about 15 minutes and remove from heat.

# Drain potatoes - don’t through away the broth, just pour it in the same saucepan with broccoli. Set potatoes aside until you purée broccoli stalks (together with all the broth).

# When nice and smooth, place potatoes into the soup, add milk and season with white pepper, salt and some chili powder, if you like spicy soups. Stir.

Keep in mind that most cream soups are best when the flavour of the vegetable isn’t blurred by too many ingredients, but at the same time you should still add just enough salt and pepper as it is said that they bring out the somewhat muted vegetable flavors.

So, back to the soup - once you have joined potatoes with the puree, seasoned and stirred everything, then the soup is almost ready. It can wait, covered, until you chop, fry and drain the bacon slices. When serving, top the soup with bacon and grated cheese. Very tasty, J was impressed

Find-the-meatball soup

If you happen to have meatballs on hand and you are trying to figure out what to make out of them, then I suggest you try this delicious and hearty meatball soup. I made meatballs myself, using the same recipe as I did for meat patties - I mixed ground meat with minced onion and egg, seasoned it with salt, pepper, chili powder and Worcestershire sauce and formed small balls out of the mixture. I baked the balls at 180 degrees C for around 25-30 minutes and there they were, waiting for becoming an ingredient in my next dish. They tasted pretty good, so I could have just eaten them as a snack , but then I thought they can do better which is why I ended up making a meatball soup. Once I realized I can prepare a soup, I had alrady eaten about half of the meatballs, so…this is why I called it find-the-meatball soup. Still, believe it or not, the lack of meatballs was not an issue - the soup ended up being delicious even with little amount of meatballs. For two bowls of soup:

500 ml water

10-15 meatballs

1 can (250 ml) diced tomatoes

1 beef bouillon cube

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp dried thyme

salt and pepper to taste

1 stalk celery, sliced

1-2 carrots, sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

a handful of fusilli

# Slice carrots and celery stalk. In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil.

# Add tomato sauce, bouillon, oregano, basil, thyme, salt and pepper, celery, carrots, and crushed garlic. Simmer for 30 minutes.

# Add fusilli and meatballs, cook until pasta is done. Top with grated cheese to serve.

This soup demanded hardly any work which is why I was actually amazed how nice it came out.

It should be just as tasty the next day as well, but in that case make sure you don’t use too much pasta, because after a while, the pasta soaks up all the soup!

Creamy tomato soup

Lately, I have tried to eat less in the evening. You know, trying to avoid eating a plate full of pasta with heavy cream but instead stick to the soup and salad. Sometimes I succeed in it - e.g. I am happy with soup or salad and won’t start eating chocolate after a light dinner, sometimes I just give up and prepare something extra heavy. Below you’ll find a recipe of a creamy tomato soup which is ideal for those light dinner days. Definitely a keeper for me. You’ll get one bowl of soup from the following ingredients, so just multiply the amounts with the number of people you are preparing the soup.

1 shallot or a smaller onion

2 tomatoes

100 ml milk

100 ml chicken broth (I used the leftover broth from spicy chicken soup)

0.5 tsp sugar

0.5 tsp ground paprika

0.5 tsp dried basil

0.25 tsp garlic powder

1 tbsp basil pesto

1 tbsp cream cheese

salt and pepper

butter

 

# Mince onion and chop tomatoes.

# Melt the butter in a saucepan and simmer onion until tender. Pour  over with chopped tomato, broth, milk, pesto and seasoning.

# Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer covered about 10 minutes.

# Puree using a food processor or blender. Stir in cream cheese and wait until it is melted.

# Adjust seasoning and serve immediately with grated cheese.

I loved the texture and the taste of the soup…so very creamy and yet light. Will start making this healthy dish more often, that’s for sure.

Spicy chicken soup

This pretty spicy chicken soup is great to have as a dinner in a cold, rainy and windy day (and we get a lot of them in Belgium). I got the idea from Catherine and adjusted her recipe a bit. You can add potatoes, carrots or celery - I limited myself with canned tomatoes and it came out very nicely. For two persons:

500 ml water

1 tsp salt

0.5 tsp pepper

1 garlic glove

1 tsp dried parsley

1 chicken bullion cube

100 g chicken fillet

 

Pour water into a saucepan, add seasoning and chicken fillet and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer about 45-60 minutes (until chicken juices run clear). Remove and shred chicken, reserve broth. You can use the time for chopping vegetables, for preparing a dessert, for reading papers or cleaning the kitchen etc. For me, it went by very quickly.

 10 ml olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic glove, crushed

250 ml (1 can) whole peeled tomatoes

1 tsp chili powder

1 tbsp sour cream

 

# In a large pot over medium heat cook onion and garlic until slightly browned.

# Stir in whole tomatoes, chili powder, sour cream, shredded chicken and about 400 ml broth. You can also add 100-150 ml tomato juice, a few tablespoons corn and some more chopped vegetables (as mentioned above).  

# Simmer for 30 minutes (or until vegetables you added are soft).

# Serve immediately (otherwise it will thicken and you will get porridge instead of soup) with grated cheese and toasted bread.

For me it was pretty nice to eat chicken inside a soup for a change - I usually make either chicken pasta, chicken curry or chicken salad and I guess I haven’t actually made chicken soup. I think it is a great recipe in a sense that it is so flexible - you can adjust seasoning and ingredients about any quantity to your liking and still enjoy the basic flavors. If you have leftovers, then no worries, this soup freezes well.