Carla’s Incredible French Onion Oxtail Soup

Thanks to Goldilocks for sponsoring this episode.
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For the full recipe and more, head to Food Processing (my newsletter):
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2:33 – Oxtail Stock Market
5:32 – The Bone-Water Wonder Duo
8:37 – Strain Without Spilling
11:40 – It’s Tomorrow Now
18:06 – Cheesy Toast Time
19:54 – Toast Time
20:15: The Big Finale

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Producer: Zoie Omega
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Director of Photography: Tim Racca

Food Stylist: Cybelle Tondu
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Editor and Comic Genius: Meg Felling
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Theme music “Magic Hours” by Amy Crawford
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#carlalallimusic #frenchonionsoup

Hello my oxes and foxes it’s Carla and I am here again in my kitchen today with a brand new recipe French onion and oxtail soup it has come to my attention recently that the people would like a french onion soup and I am happy to oblig in the recipe development process

I watched lots and lots of french onion soup videos looked at a bunch of recipes and my number one beef is at a certain point they just tell you to grab two chord of delicious homemade beef stock but nobody tells you how to make it so for my recipe I developed an extremely

Delicious fortified beef stock so I’m going to show you how to make the stock on day one which is how I recommend and then I’m also going to show you what I did to make the caramelized onions also better and then we all know the best part of the French onion soup is

Spooning into the molten cheesy layer I dare declare that this cheesy layer is going to make every other cheese topping look like a sad battered withered ripped apart surrender flag just lying in the dirt today’s episode is sponsored by one of my absolute favorite Brands Goldilocks we are in year two of working

With Goldilocks and I could not be more proud to rep this brand at this point I’m cooking with Goldilocks I got my mom cooking with Goldilocks my older son has the Goldilocks up at College a bunch of you guys are already enjoying Goldilocks pans what’s awesome about Goldilocks is

That they believe in really well-designed and purposeful cookware and I really believe that having well-made purposeful cookware is going to make you a better cook there’s nothing more upsetting than going out and venturing out on a recipe and to have it not work out and it’s really not

You it could be your pan so if you’re ready to upgrade to some serious cookware but you don’t want to buy something and absolutely blow your budget and break the bank these are the pieces that you want to have go to cook Goldilocks Carla to browse The

Collection pick out what will work for you in your kitchen these pieces are backed by a lifetime guarantee there’s really nothing not to love we love Goldilocks go check them out cook Goldilocks dcom Carla get to It french onion soup or no french onion soup everybody should know how to make a great beef stock and we don’t talk about it enough we’re talking about chicken stock all the time and mushroom stock and mushroom trimmings all the time we need to be talking about beef stock

Every stock is going to follow some basic principles right there’s bones water aromatics that’s essentially it but in each of those you have choices I am choosing really fantastic bones I wanted meaty bones I wanted bones that were going to give a lot of flavor but

Also a lot of body collagen richness the kind of stock that when you take it out the next day it’s like so in order to get there I was like oxtails oxtails are amazing they have bones they also have a lot of collagen and they have just a

Really perfect ratio of delicious meat and because they’re like a brazing kind of a cut they’re meant to be long cooked they have a lot of flavor to give so this is 50% oxtail bones and then the other 50% I’m just calling for a meaty beef bone

Because that meat is also giving a lot of flavor in addition to the Bone which is obviously more flavor but also collagen the richness all of that body is coming from Bones so at my fantastic butcher they have just in their like freezer bags of different kind of Bones

And they have beef neck bones so beef neck bones kind of had everything I was looking for a lot of bone but some nice beefy bits too some nice connective tissue which is that collagen the body the richness the gelatin I’m roasting in a 12in skillet um I find this to be

Better than roasting on a rimmed baking sheet because you capture more of the juices and then it’s also a lot easier to deglaze and pour these bones into the stock pot later and these pans can go stove top to oven no sweat so my oven is

At 400° I’m going to lightly salt a lot of people will tell you don’t salt the stock because if you reduce it later it can get um too salty fine that’s on my mind I’m salting sparingly but I do believe that it’s going to help with the flavor and then

As I often do just to get things started start getting some heat conducting start moving fats around I’m adding just a little bit of vegetable oil just to coat I’m going to take my rings off and then toss this together with my hand so everything is coated the reason the soup

Is so good is because of the beef stock this is O laa this is Chik we’re doing it the right way and these are going to roast until they’re really Brown really caramelized I’m going to toss them every now and again but that’s going to take

5050 5 maybe call it the better part of an hour roasty bone time these have been in the oven about 55 minutes they’re really well caramelized even the fat is caramelized there’s some hissing and sizzling and good noises like that happening straight from here I’m going to go into my stock pot where

I’m going to build the whole broth any fat or juices that are on your Skillet you just want to make sure that those get into the pot too and I’m going to cover this with six quarts of water I’m going to start over high heat to flavor

This now I’m dropping in two dried shitake caps which give like really lovely Umami flavor and also stealing from F broth I’m adding a couple of pieces of star anus I’m also going to add now another thing that gives beautiful color Umami flavor a little

Bit more salt is just going to be really nice flavor in the soup almost as a simmer there’s already foam so I’m just going to skim these are what the little bits of protein look like that’s like you know the blood coagulating and you just want to take those off as you go

And essentially this is it for the next couple of hours so if you stroll by just make sure that you’re at a bare simmer give it a skim every once in a while set a timer for a couple hours and we shall be back this is what your stock is going to

Look like at about 2 hours not that different not a ton of evaporation because we’re keeping the simmer really low the meat on the bones if you press against it is going to feel still very bouncy very firm so that’s going to get more tender over time and then as we’ve

Been going you know I’ve got like a bowl of fat like this I’m just taking that off now with like more of a flat wide spoon and you will have quite a bit of be fat later if you’re chilling the soup all of that Fat’s going to rise and you

Can take it off once it’s chilled at this point of your stock sitting you’re halfway through I’m putting in my carrots that are just peeled and cut in half I learned that peeling carrots is a little less bitter in stock and this half half onion is taken from the total

Amount of onions that’s going to go into the caramelized onions and just a handful of thme to give a little squeeze this is the community for the second half of the stock simmer going to get a little sweetness and brightness from the vegetables that are in here it’s just

Going to round out the flavor and another 2 hours until the meat is more really has given all it has to give and the stock is going to take like really robust um it shouldn’t evaporate too much but it’ll come down a little bit more and at that point we can strain

It it smells amazing it looks fantastic and now I’m going to show you how I like to strain stock that has lots of bones in it my method is to have a vessel big enough to hold all of the stock I have a colander set in there and that is where

I’m just going to get all the really big things out if I were to just pour this through a fine mess strainer it would Splash it would plop it would overflow the strainer for sure and so this way I can get all these big giant meaty pieces

Out of the way let them cool down I do pick through this meat and give it to Marge I think that eating the carrots is one of the great things that you can do because they’re so filled with protein so I’ve got a little bit of liquid that

Came off I’m just going to pour that back over here and then grab a fine mesh strainer and then pour through again so you can see it’s got this really beautiful golden brown Rich color so once you’ve strained it you should have between 4 and 1/2 and 5 quarts you

Actually have extra stock more stock than you’re going to need for the soup having an extra quart of stock to put into the freezer is just like fantastic secret treasure Trove waiting for you I want to finish seasoning the stock to taste and I’m using a couple more ingredients that are giving more

Depth a little more saltiness a little more Umami staying in that kind of brown Town flavor profile so a tablespoon of Worcester and I really like fish sauce to finish off like long brazes long Rich fatty meaty things like a little fish sauce at the end of like a lamb stew is

Incredible I’m going to add a little MSG which just makes everything delicious and has all of the Umami that this is just like an Umami bomb anyway a little more regular salt cuz the only salt in this until now has been the little bit that I salted the bones

With now for the part of the show where I precariously pour something that took 4 hours to make and everyone here is terrified and I hope you at home are also terrified because we love Terror perfect one qu let this cool then cover and chill same

For your big batch let cool cover and chill and I will see you fools Tomorrow I am getting ready for the onion part of the French onion soup and what I have here is 2 and 1/2 lounds of onions the first time I did the recipe I was going for like a very thin caramelized onion which you know having done some research that’s what most

People do for French onions soup so I did that and it took like over 2 hours of active time just to deal with the onions and then the other thing I didn’t really care for was you just get soup that has a lot of like stringy slippery

Things in it so that night I stared at the ceiling and decided like what if the onions weren’t cut so small you could get a lot more color a lot faster and then when you ate the soup you would actually get like some bites of onion so

That’s where I ended up these are half inch SLI slices and this is the pot that I’m going to build the entire soup in so the broth is going to end up in here and everything else so I’m going to start with some vegetable oil you could use

Olive oil I guess I just I don’t think it needs to taste like olive oil it’s more about the sweetness of the onion and the broth coming through and I use neutral oil to Brown the bones so this is over mediumish I want to start a little bit

High to get things going going and then I have a little bit of butter and just get this butter foaming so the first stage is about jump starting the onions getting them to release a lot of liquid quickly and then once that process is started then I can start building color

But this takes about 25 minutes as opposed to like over 2 hours so that was a good change the heat the salt and the fat are going to be what starts driving the liquid off sizzling it’s sounding juicy and now with the heat pretty moderate I’m going

To keep it covered create Steam and pressure and let these go for about 5 minutes check them out lots of steam a little bit of color I’m totally fine with I’ve got tender juicy onions that are starting to soften which is exactly what I want and this next phase I’m

Going to cook uncovered with the heat medium am high and really try to rapidly evaporate liquid because with a ton of liquid present you’re not going to get a lot of Browning I can also toss the th in now give a little squeeze so I want

To give these time to like be down on the surface of the pot and start to take color and resist the urge to constantly toss it’s going to take like 12 minutes all right I’m going to toss and I’m going to show you what to do if your

Onions aren’t evenly browned but you’re starting to see a lot of Browning on the surface of the pan so if this happens to you there’s three things that you can do and you can do them together individually one is nudge your heat down the second thing you can do is just add

A splash of water I don’t want a ton of water in here cuz we just had a whole conversation about steaming you can just scrape up the Browning with a wooden spoon the third thing you can do and I’m probably going to do this in addition to

Adding that water is just cover the pot for a couple of minutes all right this is where I want to land I have onions that are really nice and caramelized on the edges they are floppy without having absolutely no Integrity they’re tender but there’s something still there because they’re

Going to keep cooking in the stock so I’m going to glaze with some W verth if you have white wine open use that if you don’t drink use water use something like sakei would be good the first batch of the caramelized onions I actually tried using rye whiskey and it was also good

So you know just go rumage around in your liquor cabinet for something that works so I want to cook off the vermouth um and I’m also using the vermouth to help me release all that fond my recipe also has a bit of Ura chili which is a not too hot chili that

Has really nice dark raisin chocolatey notes I’m doing a little more than half a teaspoon um you don’t have to use it you could use a pinch of cayenne or red chili flakes or Aleppo or goou garu I always am looking for like that little bit of tingly to balance everything out

This looks great the vermouth is absorbed slash evaporated Okay so now I’ve got allpurpose flour and the reason the flour goes in is to help give the soup a little bit of body so that you don’t feel like you’re just drinking stock I’ve kept it on a very light ratio of

Flour it’s a really nice contrast to have the light textured broth with all of the Rich cheese and the Crouton on top I’m going to cook this for about a minute just to cook off any raw flour taste you’re not really going to be able

To analyze this like as a blonde Rue or a darker Rue because there’s so much color already in the bottom of this pan so just go with your nose I’m just going to slow this down for a second so I can show you the stock that we made

Yesterday so this is that layer of fat that I was talking about was going to rise to the top so that’s a lot easier than like meticulously spooning liquid hot fat off of a simmering soup also you can see the body of this stock is like thicker it’s not freezing cold right now

But that’s the all of the collagen that has come out of the bones and the connective tissue and the marrow and all that stuff so this is where the stock and the caramelized onions become onion and oxtail soup and they need this time to simmer 25 minutes you

Want flavors to meld now I’m going to add about a half a cup of red wine shout out Molly BOS this is a delicious drinking red wine put something into the soup that you’re going to drink with Dinner now for the fun part butter cheesy toast so I’m going to butter some nice slices of bread like sourdough is really nice country loaf this is um a delicious pman that has some palenta in it whatever toast you would use to make a crouton is great I have my toast

Oven set to 400° set a timer for six and then take a look cuz you don’t want to burn them I burn them now I’m going to make the cheese mixture that goes on top classically it’s Grier a lot of people reached out and said like a slice of Swiss cheese is

What they really like or a combo I wanted something really cheesy I wanted that Grier flavor I wanted a really great cheese pull and so I decided to cut my cheese mixture 50/50 with low moisture mozzarella which is is just the mozzarella that comes like shrink wrapped like poo not fresh

Mozzarella and I don’t know I just wanted the cheese topping to like do a little more work the best video I watched was um episode of Julia Child and she did all these different versions and one of the versions she did she finished with grated raw onion that

Stuck in my head I loved that as a topping so the way that I’ve interpreted that is just having some thinly sliced scallion greens and scallion whites that I mix into the cheese big pinch of Ira you do not need salt if you’re using AA I don’t really think you need black

Pepper but you could use black pepper instead of Ura and just tossing This Together buttery bread never gets old nice and crispy nice and brown but the underside is like a little bit softer this was a late addition to the recipe but a little shmear of Dijon mustard I

Think goes so well with cheese and mustard and onion go so well together I think we get to make soup now the one last thing that I’m going to do at the end of this is season the soup with some cherry vinegar you could use lemon juice you could use any other

Vinegar again long cooked flavors like really come alive and like gel in another way with a little bit of acidity yes we gole okay now in order to put soup under a broiler you need to have the right kind of bowl I happen to have the right kind of bowl because

These are my grandmother’s and I’ve had these forever they are the perfect like what you think of when you think of french onion soup they can catch the spill over and they’re Pottery so they’re completely impervious to the Heat and we’re on foil just because we’re going to have a cheese overflow

And it’s going to make cleaning up easier and you’re just going for like a nice ratio of onion and broth so Scoop from the bottom Crouton on on top if you have an oval piece of bread just tear it in half so it fits oo right on the edge okay I don’t

Mind a little tilt heaping qu cup per approximately 2 oz I’m going to put these into the toaster oven and then I’m going to turn the broiler on it’s all right is it all right oh my darling Oh My Darling oh my God she’s beautiful to

Me oh yes indeed yum I love the little spotting of brown but that there’s also like cheese lava I love that the Crouton doesn’t fit perfectly so this is like really crunchy the parts that were up and exposed but then it’s like jubbly and wubbly underneath mozzarella to my face a

Mozzarella to my face m m m M I love the brothy bread I really I love the multiple textures off the bread I really rode the wave of recipe development working on this there was a point when I was sweating over to our caramelized onions where I wondered what

Is this why does it exist do people really like this does anybody eat this what is the point of this which is natural and normal for like somewhere in between stage two and stage three of recipe velopment when you start to wonder if you can cook if you know

Anything if food is good it all kind of goes into the toilet and then you have your breakthrough and then that leads to act four which is triumph and um joy and um success and overcoming of all hurdles and obstacles which is where I am now enjoying my French ending suit thank you

To Goldilocks for making roasting of my bones possible for making simmering of my stock possible and for making melding possible we love you Goldilocks thank you so much I don’t think Molly would mind that I’m cooking with her wine yum