French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup

Ingredients

3 large yellow onions (slice 'em up)

4 Tbsp butter

1 cup white wine (I used pinot grigio)

42 oz beef broth

Salt and pepper

bread

shredded cheese (I used Gouda)

Equipment

slow-cooker, skillet, stove

Instructions

Melt the butter in the skillet. Add onions and saute until they're soft and a little bit browned. Add the wine. Pour it into the slow-cooker with the beef broth, and a dash of salt and pepper. Cook on low for 4-5 hours. Toast the bread lightly. Serve in bowls with bread on top, cheese on top of that, and add a little more soup on top of the cheese to melt it all together.

Yields

4-6 bowls of soup

Total time

4.5 hours: About 15 minutes of prep, 4 hours in the slow-cooker, 10 minutes to finish off

Cleanup rating 4/5

Slow-cooker recipes always have higher cleanup ratings. We didn't like this enough to keep the leftovers, so I strained the liquid out of it with a colander into the sink, and threw out the remaining onion pieces. Plus you have more dishes than you normally get from a slow-cooker recipe: skillet, knife and cutting board, and the five billion tears from cutting up so much onion at once.

Difficulty rating 3/10

There are many steps, but none of them are particularly difficult. You do need to try to get the onion slices approximately the same size for even cooking, but that's probably the trickiest part.

Flavor rating 4/10

Meh. I don't really know what went wrong with it, but it just wasn't very good. The wine flavor was pretty strong, which is not what I want out of a French onion soup. I think that was the biggest problem. I would cut down on the wine.

Adjustability: low

There isn't much to French onion soup. There's onions, liquid, then bread and cheese. It's rare for "peasant food" to not be very adjustable, but this one doesn't have much of anywhere to go. Different onions, different wine, different broth, different bread, different cheese, but they're all the same basic ingredients. For what it's worth, the gouda worked really well, even though the original recipe suggested Swiss.

Make it with...

I made it with beer mushrooms, sauteed beer brats with garlic, and potatoes. It could be its own meal, or go with all sorts of things.

Beer Mushrooms

You know what's awesome? Beer. You know what else is awesome? Mushrooms. But guess what wasn't double-awesome? These beer mushrooms. They were okay.

Beer + mushrooms = beer mushrooms

That's them, on the right, with beer brats and potatoes.

Ingredients

8 oz mushrooms

2 Tbsp butter

1/2 cup beer

salt and pepper

Equipment

skillet, stove

Instructions

Melt butter in a skillet. Add mushrooms. Add beer. Cook for about 30 minutes, letting the mushrooms absorb all the beer. Salt and pepper to taste.

Yields

3-4 servings

Total Time
about 30 minutes

Cleanup rating 2/5
The thing about making something with a lot of butter and leaving it in the pan while you eat dinner is that it gets that fatty stuff all over the pan. I think it's kind of gross, but it's easy to clean up.

Difficulty rating 2/10
Patience factors into difficulty, which is the only reason this isn't a 1/10.

Flavor rating 3/10
Meh. I like mushrooms. I like beer. (At least, I like the beer I used for this.) I didn't really like this.

Adjustability: low
Use a different beer (the original recipe recommended a stout, maybe that was part of my problem) or use different mushrooms, maybe add some other herbs/seasonings, but that's about all you can do.

Make it with...
I made this to go along with French onion soup, sauteed beer brats with garlic, and potatoes (they were sliced this time to make them cook a little faster). You could make them with just about anything... chicken, pork, beef, vegetarian meals, whatever.

White Wine Sauce

Congratulations, reader! You're reading my first post with a total flop!

Well, it was still edible. But it wasn't very good. I didn't even bother taking a picture of it.

I made this sauce to put on chicken that I lightly breaded in Parmesan, garlic powder, and paprika, and sauteed in a pan with some olive oil.

White Wine Sauce

Ingredients
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp flour
1.5 cups white wine (I used pinot grigio)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Equipment
saucepan, stove

Instructions
Melt butter on low in saucepan. Add flour and salt; stir constantly for about 2 minutes. Add wine; stir and cook for about 4-5 minutes. Remove from heat and add Parmesan, stirring until it's all melted.

Yields
about 1.5 cups of sauce

Total time
about 10 minutes

Cleanup rating 2/5
I actually haven't cleaned it yet but it won't be hard. Just don't let it sit. That would get pretty gross.

Difficulty rating 3/10
It isn't particularly hard, but you need to babysit it because of all the stirring. You can't do much else for those 10 minutes.

Flavor rating 3/10
The real problem, I think, is that the cheese didn't really melt. I know, I know; I should have used fresh Parmesan. Or at least shaved, not that crumbly stuff. But it didn't really melt, so it didn't really incorporate, so the sauce didn't really get thick. Birk suggested more flour or some cornstarch or something, which would probably help. (The problem is, my timing was otherwise perfect, so I didn't have the patience to wait to fix the sauce and let everything else get cold.)

So, it isn't impossible... my suggestions for fixing it would be:
- Use better Parmesan, or perhaps even a different cheese that melts more easily.
- Give yourself a few minutes to fix it with cornstarch if you need to (you can leave it on very low heat if you need to keep it warm while everything else finishes up).
- Maybe less wine in the ratio of wine to cheese, too. It was very... winy.

Winey Chicken and Roasted Carrots

It's a two-fer! (There's also garlic mashed potatoes and peas but there isn't much to say about them... follow box directions for the potatoes, and microwave the peas with some butter. Ta-da...)

Winey Chicken

Ingredients
Chicken (I used tenderloins, about 10 of them... 1 package)
Red wine, about a cup
Minced garlic
Olive oil, 1 Tbsp
Paprika
Brown sugar (about 1/2 cup)
Salt

Equipment
Skillet (with a lid), stove

Instructions
Put the oil in your skillet and put it on medium heat. Add garlic and let it cook until it's tender and starting to turn golden. Add the chicken in one layer and cook it ten minutes on each side (until it's almost entirely cooked; no pink on the outside). Sprinkle the brown sugar and paprika on the chicken, and pour in the wine. Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes. (If you want even color, turn the chicken about halfway through. You can see in the photo that I didn't do this.)

Yields
About 3 servings, for us. Scalable to a degree.

Total time
About 45 minutes.

Cleanup rating 3/5
You get a gunky pan but if you wash it quickly, it's not a problem. (I didn't wash it quickly.)

Difficulty rating 5/10
You really have to pay attention to this one at all the stages, and it takes a long while. It's helpful to have a few other things going (like I did) but then you have to orchestrate everything.

Flavor rating 5/10
Good... not great. I feel like I can fix it somehow. Maybe more sugar and paprika? Maybe I needed to flip the chicken? I'm not sure. But it was good.

Roasted Carrots

Ingredients
Baby carrots
Vegetable oil
Seasonings, including kosher salt (I used shallot-pepper seasoning)

Equipment
pan, oven, foil

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400F and line the pan with foil. Toss your carrots in the oil, coating them evenly. Lay them in a single layer on your foil-lined pan and sprinkle with kosher salt and the seasoning of your choice. Bake for 40 minutes.

Yields
How many carrots did you use? Scalable.

Total time
45 minutes

Cleanup rating 1/5
Wait for foil to cool; throw away foil. Easy-peasy!

Difficulty rating 2/10
Other than testing to make sure the carrots are done, there isn't much to this. You can do it.

Flavor rating 7/10
I love roasted veggies, especially potatoes and carrots. YUM. Just... just yum.

My Mushrooms Are Drunker Than I Am

(Well, I'm not at all drunk, so that's not really a fair comparison.)

I've never cooked mushrooms before. In fact, only in the past year or so have I even started eating mushrooms. Melting Pot stuffed mushroom caps, then Bonefish Grill's chicken marsala, then Madame Georgescu made the best little mushroom caps with some kind of Italian cheese in them, and Noodles & Company has great mushrooms in their Japanese pan noodles. So it turns out I quite like them. Tonight, I cooked them. And got them drunk.

This is one of those times where I used logic and experience and my own tastes to figure out how to make dinner, so the recipe is less-than-conventionally written.

Drunk Mushrooms

Ingredients
Mushrooms (I used three or four mid-sized button mushrooms)
Butter (I used about a Tbsp)
Garlic (I used somewhere between 1 and 2 tsp of the pre-minced stuff)
Wine (I used the cheap tiny carton of Pinot Noir from Target, probably 1/4 cup?)

Equipment
Pan, stove, stirring spoon

Instructions
Chop up your mushrooms. Don't worry if you have no idea how to cut mushrooms; I didn't. Just try to make even-sized pieces and you'll be fine.

Put your butter in your pan on medium heat. When the butter is melting, add the garlic and stir everything around to make things even.

When the butter is all melted, add the mushrooms. Stir them around to make them buttery.

Leave it alone for a while (I was cooking another recipe so I didn't mess with them much) and inhale the delicious odor emanating from your pan. I mean, yum, right?

Once the mushrooms are getting tenderer (poke them with a fork... I probably waited about 5-7 minutes?) add the wine.

Wait for about half of it to evaporate (stir occasionally) and then put your mushrooms on whatever you want (I used garlic mashed potatoes). Devour.

Yields
Well, that's up to you, isn't it? I'm categorizing this one as "scalable" since it's easier to make more or less. I made it for one person; you could easily make it for eight.

Total time
This one's tough, as I made about four different things in the kitchen tonight and didn't really watch the clock as much as I watched the food. I would estimate fifteen minutes.

Cleanup rating 2/5
The only reason this isn't a 1 is because you have to clean a pan. Also, you're working with red wine, so if you spill any, that will be difficult to clean, and there are little bits of mushroom and garlic that can get all over the place if you're reckless.

Difficulty rating 6/10
Cutting button mushrooms? Not super easy. They're round and have a weird texture and getting even pieces was a little difficult. Then again, this is the first time I've ever cut mushrooms. Also, you can get them pre-sliced if you're so inclined. You have to kind of know what you're doing here, though. Mushrooms feel almost tender when they're raw, so you have to pay attention to get your timing right. And don't burn the garlic. And don't add too much wine. And don't crowd the mushrooms. (Seriously, let them breathe in the pan. If you have too many mushrooms, use a bigger pan.)

Flavor rating 8/10
I think I can improve on this. I didn't really know how they'd turn out, so I was hesitant to season them, so maybe I'll experiment with some of that. But if you can manage to make these, you can probably guess at some kind of seasoning you might like with them. I've seen similar recipes mention rosemary, so that might be a good jumping-off point. But I loved these as they were, with my mashed potatoes and peas. Delicious.