French Onion Soup

I am a soup girl.  What can I say?  If there is one thing, almost above all else, that I would choose to eat as comfort food, it would be soup.  I like pretty much everything - tomato, mushroom-barley, broccoli-cheddar, chicken tortilla, chicken noodle, split pea, just to name a very few that I have made or enjoyed recently.  I am also recently VERY enamored of my crock pot, particularly on nights when we have a billion things to do and dinner preparation would just get in the way.  So, when I watched a recent episode of Cook's Country on PBS and the chef prepared french onion soup in the slow cooker, I decided, then and there that I MUST try the recipe (which will follow at the end of the post).

Because I knew that I would not have time to do all of the prep work last Friday morning (I needed to be at the gym for a class at 8 am.....yes, NEEDED to be there), I decided to do all of my choppin' and measurin' the night before.  I purposefully left my contacts in all day (not an easy feat for me, by the way because I have really dry eyes) which was necessary as I needed to chop 6 large onions for the recipe and my contacts protect my eyes from the sulfuric compounds way better than my glasses.  I chopped onions until my eyes streamed (despite the stupid contacts), minced thyme and measured brown sugar, flour, apple butter, soy sauce and salt and pepper, placing everything in tidy little Tupperware bowls in my fridge, just waiting patiently until the next morning when I could dump everything into my crock pot.

Friday morning was hectic, as usual, but I managed to get all of the ingredients into the crock pot to bubble and simmer away all day long.  Seriously: this recipe says that the soup should simmer for a MINIMUM of 10 to 12 hours on high.  Anyway, I figured that starting everything off at 6:30 in the morning should give me more than enough time for a 6 pm dinner time.  I did as the recipe told me: I melted four tablespoons of butter in the crock pot, which took A LOT longer than it did on TV.  While that was (not) melting, I placed two pounds of beef bones in the microwave to cook on high for about 10 minutes.  Let's pause here, shall we?  On the show, the chef had these lovely, innocuous looking (presumably) leg bones with little to no meat attached and which, when microwaved, turned a lovely, burnished brown color.  I, on the other hand, was only able to find "beef neck bones" at my local grocery store, so mine were meaty, kind of grisly and rather gnarly looking.  If you have ever taken an anatomy class (I was pre-med in college), there is nothing left to the imagination about "beef neck bones".  I am not a squeamish person, but I had to direct my mind to NOT call these bones "vertebrae".  My hope for you, should you choose to accept the challenge of this recipe, is that you can find some boring old leg bone cuts.  Beef neck bones will work in a pinch, but I would say that they are not for the faint of heart.  Moving along.....

So, the butter sort of melts and I add the onions, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, a teaspoon of minced thyme, a teaspoon of black pepper and 2 teaspoons of salt.  I tossed all of that together and then added my liquid mixture: five tablespoons of flour, 3/4 cup of beef broth (substituted for dry sherry, 'cause who has THAT in their pantry?), 1/4 cup soy sauce and 3/4 cup of apple butter.  I mixed all of that together and nestled my microwaved beef neck bones into and around the onions (while thinking, "these are not vertebrae.  These are not vertebrae".  Lies.  *shudder*)  I placed the top on, turned it to high and left to begin my day.

I came home periodically during the day (partly because I am paranoid and I am always a little afraid to leave the crock pot sitting and stewing all day long) and my house smelled ah-mazing! Seriously, it was pretty pungent, but the onions gradually lost their sting and because caramelized and so very gorgeous.  Even the neck bones looked appealing, which is saying something.  I was so excited - when we got home, after a very long afternoon of running around to set up for my oldest child's regional science fair, I made Swiss cheese topped ciabatta croutons and finished off the soup (after removing the neck bones and discarding them - good riddance!) with 1 cup of chicken stock and 1 cup of beef broth, heated until just simmering.  I checked the seasoning for the soup, adjusted with a little salt and pepper and dinner was served!

The soup smelled so good and it tasted......boring.  I don't know what to say about it other than that.  The flavor was dull, the onions, which maintained their texture due to the way the recipe instructs you to chop them, were alternating versions of crunchy and slimy.  (I have battled my hatred of onions for a very long time.  I thought I had won, but this soup showed me, yet again, that I do not like eating heaping spoonfuls of nothing but onions.  One would think that I would not have attempted french onion soup, knowing this about myself, but other versions that I have had have been infinitely more palatable.)  The broth, which I expected to be super meaty and flavorful was instead lackluster and really sweet.  (That is another thing that I can't stand - sweet soups.  Soup is savory!  It should be hot!  Oh, wait....that is another rant.)  This was hot, but it really didn't do anything for me.  My two oldest choked their portions down, my husband had seconds, but the baby swept his entire bowl onto the floor, splashing me in the process.  Fail.

Ah, well....this recipe isn't for me, but maybe it is for you.  Good luck.  I am going to go back to the drawing board, especially with the enormous amount of leftovers that I have.  I can't bear to throw food away, so I went ahead and pureed the stuff (catching an errant neck bone in the process;  I am lucky I didn't wreck my immersion blender).  I plan to serve it later this week with a healthy dose of blue cheese blended in.  I hope that those steps will improve the flavor and texture issues for me.

French Onion Soup in a Slow Cooker (adapted from Cook's Country)

6 large onions, sliced pole to pole (end to end, though I would recommend slicing them or dicing them much smaller than into 8 sections)
4 tablespoons of butter, melted
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon of fresh thyme, minced (could use about 1/3 of a tsp of dried thyme instead)
2 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon of black pepper
2 pounds beef bones, microwaved on a paper towel covered plate on high for about 8-10 minutes, until well browned
5 tablespoons flour
3/4 cup dry sherry (I subbed out with beef broth)
3/4 cup apple butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup beef broth

Melt butter in slow cooker.  Add onions, sugar, thyme, salt and pepper and stir to combine.  Combine flour, sherry, apple butter, and soy sauce and pour mixture over onions.  Toss to coat.  Nestle beef bones under onions, around the edge of the slow cooker.  Cover and cook, on high, for 10 to 12 hours.  When onions are soft and caramelized at the end of cooking time, heat chicken stock and beef broth before adding to soup.  Remove beef bones and serve with Swiss cheese covered toasts.