Kreacher’s French Onion Soup (with beer battered onion rings)

Decided to make French onion soup for dinner (a while back… haven’t been updating my blog as often as I should!). Used my awesome new Harry Potter cookbook to great success.

INGREDIENTS:

Soup:

4 medium onions

25g butter

1 tsp salt

1/4 black pepper

1/4 tsp sugar

1 Tbsp standard flour

6 cups beef or chicken stock (or 3 of each, if you’re like me and don’t own enough…)

Croutons:

1 piece bread per serving (I used Vogel’s)

Butter

Parmesan cheese

Tasty cheese for serving

Onion Rings:

Beer batter mix (FoggDogg’s!)

Beer

Large onion rings (just chuck the remainder of the onion in the soup)

Preheated the oven to 180*c. Left it for about 15 minutes, as our stupid oven takes nearly 40 minutes to heat up. (Sidenote: oven is now being fixed. We have been subsiding off takeaways and microwaved food for a week. Eek!) During the break, I went running around the house asking flatmates if they would like dinner. Flatmate #3 (weirdly) was the only one to agree.

Peeled the onions, sliced them in half (pole to pole), and began to slice as thinly as possible. Had to stop because I couldn’t see the onions any more.

Got swimming goggles and started slicing. Swimming goggles are God! Unless people are home to see it, in which case add less water and salt to the soup, because you probably won’t need it what with the tears dripping on to the onion and all.

In previous recipes, I have found myself caught out by not being prepared (see: the dreaded tomato paste container), so I decided to dissolve my stock well ahead of time. Got out a mixing bowl and started filling it with cups of water. Quickly realised that it was nowhere near big enough, so grabbed the biggest one we have. Then, I realised that I didn’t have anywhere near enough beef stock to make this stupid soup, so I balanced it out with half chicken stock. Sue me.

I melted the butter in our wok, then realised that it probably wasn’t going to be big enough. I’m not so great at judging capacity, apparently. Transferred the butter over to our biggest soup pot. Stirred the onions around in the big pot with the salt, pepper, and sugar. Kreacher says to cook the onions until browned, but as anyone who reads this blog knows, my onions don’t change colour. Ever.

That photo was taken after 20 minutes of cooking and stirring, when the book says it should take about 15. I turned the heat right up and gave them a couple more minutes, but gave up when the whitish-green onions started to smell burnt.

Stirred in the flour, then slowly added the stock (while stirring) and brought the soup to a boil.

(Onion soup pictured is not boiling. Duh.)

Reduced to a simmer and cooked uncovered for 30 minutes.

While the soup was cooking, I de-crusted and buttered the bread. Sprinkled with parmesan cheese, then put in the oven for about ten minutes to crisp.

Heated up a fry pan full of oil to make the onion rings. Took longer than expected. Took pictures while I waited.

Dipped the onion rings into beer batter and plopped them in to fry. Once finished, I arranged everything nice and pretty(ish), and ta-daaa!

Kreacher’s French onion soup. With leftover beer.