Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

SmurfBlueSnuggie wrote: I have yet to find a recipe for french onion soup that I consider adequate. Would you be willing to share Marduk's?

As bob mentioned, I don't really work from recipes. I'll give a few suggestions/recommendations though.

First, I do sautee in butter, but it doesn't need to be much. I do 4-5 medium onions (or 2.5-3 large ones) and I sautee in about 2 tbsp. of butter. The key is that they should sautee until they are carmellized: most people add the liquid WAY too early. At medium heat on a gas range it should take at least 30 minutes, on an electric range it could take up to an hour or more. They should be a dark brown color by the time you add the liquid. I season the onions when I sautee them with a bit of salt and thyme. Then add your bittering agent (more on this later) and use it to deglaze the pan. THEN I add the liquid and other seasoning (a bay leaf or two, salt/pepper to taste, a pinch of cayenne pepper) and simmer for another 20-30 min before I dish it into bowls. Then put your bread into the bowls (I like baguettes) add the cheese and transfer to the oven until the cheese is lightly browned.

The key is finding the balance between the sweetness of the onions and the bitterness of your bittering agent, which is really dependent on the person and takes tweaking. Although Bob said she liked this one, for me it was too sweet: I used red onions and about 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar, which combines for the sweetest you can get. If you use a canned beef broth, you have to keep it on the sweeter side, because otherwise it tastes tinny. (Also, I cut the beef broth with equal parts chicken broth. You don't lose the beef flavor, and the canned chicken broth is overall much better quality.) I think next time I'm going to use whites and keep the balsamic. Alternatively, I might keep reds but add in a red wine to my deglazing efforts.

As far as cheeses, use a hard cheese with a nutty flavor which will offset the natural sweetness of the carmellized onions. First choice is gruyere, but it is expensive. Some will suggest swiss but the flavor of swiss (here, anyways) is far too mild to do the job. I tried Dubliner this time and was satisfied with the results. But in general, any hard cheese should work fairly well (although I'd stay away from cheddar.)

ETA: more on the bittering agent. I like the fruity flavor of the balsamic, but you could also try a red wine vinegar or even an apple cider vinegar, which would give it a more continental flavor, and would be stronger than the balsamic. If you REALLY don't want it to be sweet, go with white onion and use a distilled vinegar. You'll lose the fruitiness, though, so you'd have to give it a fairly herbed flavor not to fall flat. Also you'd definitely have to use homemade beef broth to go this route, otherwise all you'll taste will be the cans the broth was put in.

I've been told the flavor I keep missing can be added by using some sort of alcohol, but I don't have enough experience with that to know what specifically I should use. Or how. However, heavily sauteed red onions is something I haven't used.

Nachos! Blue corn tortilla chips, Cuban-style black beans, and shredded jack-and-cheddar cheese, microwaved, then topped with avocado. All ingredients from Trader Joe's.

Sounds delicious!

Making homemade pizza with the roomies!

Those all sound tasty. I had leftover bucatini carbonara with chocolate-caramel cheesecake. It was fantastic.

If you are not making no-knead bread on the regular, you should fix that posthaste. It takes minimal effort and consistently comes out delicious.

I'm mostly eating corndogs, freezer pizza, cereal, and takeout.

It's grading hell time, plus I don't want to do dishes to be able to eat or cook, and I also don't feel like confronting my roommates about their failure to ever do dishes. Maybe I'll care again once this week is over, but for now, anything that I can do with my paper- and plasticware, and without dirtying any pots or pans.

I do love corndogs, though. Guilty pleasure food.

UffishThought wrote:I'm mostly eating corndogs, freezer pizza, cereal, and takeout.

It's grading hell time, plus I don't want to do dishes to be able to eat or cook, and I also don't feel like confronting my roommates about their failure to ever do dishes. Maybe I'll care again once this week is over, but for now, anything that I can do with my paper- and plasticware, and without dirtying any pots or pans.

I do love corndogs, though. Guilty pleasure food.

Sounds like my life right now, minus the corndogs.

Emiliana wrote:

UffishThought wrote:I'm mostly eating corndogs, freezer pizza, cereal, and takeout.

It's grading hell time, plus I don't want to do dishes to be able to eat or cook, and I also don't feel like confronting my roommates about their failure to ever do dishes. Maybe I'll care again once this week is over, but for now, anything that I can do with my paper- and plasticware, and without dirtying any pots or pans.

I do love corndogs, though. Guilty pleasure food.

Sounds like my life right now, minus the corndogs.

Haha, that's what I was going to say.

One of my coworkers has bought an "organic Mexican casserole" thing for lunch every day this week, and tonight I'm going to attempt to replicate and freeze my own bowls. Way too much sodium in the packaged ones. They give me a salt buzz, cost a lot, and rarely fill me on their own.

Update: my experiment was very successful!

White rice, black beans, finely chopped onion and red bell pepper, frozen corn, sliced olives, a bit of salsa and some taco seasoning mixed in a bowl. I poured the rice mix into a 9x13 pan, topped it with some refried beans and shredded cheese and stuck in the oven to warm through. I grilled some chicken (with just a bit of salt, pepper, and taco seasoning) on my bbq. I'd also made homemade tortilla chips. When the casserole came out, I put most of it into little disposable loaf pans with lids. I added one small piece of chicken to each pack. Then I ate what was left with the last piece of chicken, some sour cream, hot sauce, and my chips. Only regret is that I don't have avocado.

homemade tortilla chips! wow! Your cassorole idea sounds a whole lot better than trying to pile up a nacho plate with everything (I tried that and it made lots of the chips sad and soggy).

Well, the tortillas weren't homemade. I just baked the tortillas until they got crispy. But yeah, it is healthier than nachos, just as yummy, and less soggy.

SmurfBlueSnuggie wrote:Only regret is that I don't have avocado.

That's written in your Book of Life, Smurf. #shame

So question. You all seem to have some great foods. I am looking for what meals freeze well. I cook up a meal or two on the weekend, freeze it in little tin dishes, and then eat it for lunch throughout the week. But some stuff just doesn't freeze well. And I need more veggies and fruits in my diet, which my current selections aren't getting me.

Anyone have ideas? Thanks!

most veggies freeze well, with the exception of potatoes. It just ruins the texture for some reason.

Green onions don't freeze well, either. It turns them all mushy.

I was going to make this amazing pho-type soup yesterday (which is sort of similar to this one, but with just chicken meat and stock instead of beef), but I didn't have some of the needed ingredients, so I decided to make a variation that included ramen. I sort of went halfway between the first recipe and this one for ramen, and the finished broth smelled great!

...then I made the mistake of adding two packets of noodles instead of one, and they sucked up all the brothy goodness. Pah. Lesson learned.

P.S. Fish sauce is nature's lesson that even things people normally hate, like anchovies, can be helpful. I hate fish, but I like me some fish sauce in a pho.

hmm, that recipe looks interesting. I find it weird that they combine beef, chicken, and fish broth. My favorite Ramen recipes use pork broth, but that's kind of hard to find sometimes.

I'm trying to make beef bulgogi tonight and I decided to make a big batch of the sweet soy sauce... and got soy sauce all over my kitchen. Sometimes I feel like giving up on cooking.