French Onion Soup & Roasted Chicken

By Tim Wu on July 13, 2008 in Blog
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Sooooo, when I said okonomiyaki, I meant French onion soup and roasted chicken. I couldn’t find the time to get to Nijiya Market, so BLAH. Here goes:


For the soup, our vegetables: Two medium-large onions, 1 sprig of fresh thyme, 2 bay leaves, and 2 cloves of garlic.


For the chicken: One chicken breast, skin-on and bone-in. Roasting chicken with the bone in makes it a lot juicier than skinless and boneless chicken. You can always peel the skin off later too.


So in a large pot or wok over medium heat, sautee the onions in two tablespoons of butter with the thyme, bay leaves, and garlic until softened and carmelized.


While that cooks, preheat the oven to 400 and prepare the chicken by rubbing it liberally with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Feel free to add other herbs and spices to your liking, such as oregano or rosemary, but you’d be surprised how flavorful good chicken can be just roasted with salt and pepper.

When the oven is heated, roast the chicken for around 40 minutes while you make the soup.


After around 25 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, your onions will be nice and caramelized.


As you can see, they cook down quite a bit.


Add around a cup of red wine, and turn the heat to high to bring to a boil. When the wine is boiling, bring the heat back down to around medium and cook until the alcohol cooks out and wine evaporates.


This will take around 10 minutes or so.


Fish out the thyme and the bay leaves, and then sprinkle the onions with two tablespoons of flour. Stir liberally to break up any lumps, and cook for another 10 minutes.


The flour will combine with the wine to form a nice and flavorful coating over your onions.


Then we add 1 quart of beef stock, and bring to a simmer.


Cook for another 10 minutes, and season to your liking.


The classic preparation of this soup begins by pouring a serving into an small crock pot or similar oven safe bowl like the one above. Make sure to leave about half an inch from the top of the bowl for the bread and cheese.


Place a slice of toasted French baguette and layer gruyere cheese over it. Be sure to toast the bread first, or it will immediately sop up the soup and become soggy.


A couple minutes under the broiler, and the cheese melts nicely around the bread.


Garnish with a sprig of thyme because it looks awesome.


By then, your chicken will be nicely golden brown. Serve along-side brown rice and salsa.


You can see how juicy the chicken is when you leave the skin and bone on.


Nom.

Oh, and my bonsai tree fails. I’m beginning to think the seeds never sprouted.

TEAR.

3 Comments

  1. Johnny July 13, 2008 Reply

    HOLY SHIT, TIM!!!

    does it taste as good as it looks?! you need to get your butt back to socal so i can personally judge…if you know what i mean ;)

  2. seriously, freaking tim.
    why are you so goood?!
    can you buy beef stock in a can?? like chicken stock? lol

  3. tim wu July 25, 2008 Reply

    haha, thanks you guys~

    beef stock typically comes in cartons at egregious supermarkets like Whole Foods. the ones that come in a can are broths.

    Stocks are made from simmering the bones, whereas broths are made more from simmering the meat with other vegetables.

    Stocks have a lot more flavor and provide that lip-smacking deliciousness that you get with well-made chicken noodle soup, for example. It comes from the gelatin released from the bones during cooking~

    If you can find stock, definitely go for stock. But if you all you can find is broth, it’ll work just as well. You may have to up the seasonings a little more though, as broths tend to be lighter in flavor.

    I’ll make this a whole new blog entry later, haha.

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