She's better now.
I am still new at this soup making lark, so any and all suggestions, recommendations and tips will be gratefully received. In the meantime, if you have never made soup, as until recently, I hadn't, you should. Especially at this time of year.
You'll need a large pan and possibly a blender.
Ingredients
- Bottle of red wine (optional)
- Bottle of white wine
- Three red onions
- Three not red onions
- More onions, or some carrots, some spinach and some celery. Actually, probably any other vegetable at this point will be fine, though if you want onion soup specifically, stick to onions. Duh.
- Six cloves of garlic
- Two pints of stock
- Some butter
- Some olive oil
- Salt, pepper, thyme
Method
Pour a glass of red wine (optional). Sip. Stick the butter and the olive oil in the large pan on a medium low heat. Bung a pinch of salt in there. Start chopping the onions.
As you finish chopping each onion, throw it in the pan and stir round. The oil and butter should be hot enough to fry by the time you've finished chopping the first one (unless you're ridiculously quick), and thereafter, the time it takes to chop each onion should be good for not having to worry about the pan until the next one goes in and you can stir again.
Ditto the celery, or extra onions. Ditto the carrots, or extra onions. And the spinach (or onions).
Mmm, raw spinach. Such a shame to cook it. Eat a few leaves. Yum.
Finally, chop the garlic, throw that in, stir round your by now pan full of steaming vegetable goo, and put the kettle on. Stir occasionally while the kettle boils.
Make up two pints of stock. I've been using Vegetable Bouillon and some really weird old stuff my grandmother has, called Vecon, but I suspect any old stock would do. Proper actually made-yourself stock is probably best of all, but I don't know how to do that yet.
Chuck the stock in. Stir it about. Chuck some white wine in. Try and leave most of the wine in the bottle. Chuck some thyme in, and a little salt and pepper. Stir it all up.
Stick a lid on it and leave it on a low heat for an hour.
No really, an hour. Ok, 45 minutes. But an hour is better. Longer is fine too.
Unless you are making onion-only soup, now take the blender to it until it is all a fine green mush. If it is onion soup, do not blend it unless you fucked up somehow. Also, with onion soup it is the law that you put some kind of cheese on toast thing in it before eating.
Either way, yum.
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