A while back, a viewer asked Ken if he’d do a #frenchonionsoup #cooking video. Well, this is it!
In this video, Ken shows you how to make French onion soup his way. It takes cues from #NewOrleans style cuisine with Ken’s own touches here and there. Jokingly, he called it #FloridaMan French Onion Soup.
If this video gets 1,000 likes Ken has said he’ll do an Oysters Absinthe Dome recipe. So, be sure to give this video a “like” if you want to see that!
Thank you for watching. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe. It really helps the channel.
KEN’S FRENCH ONION SOUP
3 lbs. Onions (Peeled, Halved, and Thinly Sliced)
1/4 c. Fat (Butter, Olive Oil, Chicken Fat, Duck Fat, or Goose Fat Preferred)
2 c. Dry White Wine
1 – 3 tbsp. #Absinthe
6 c. Chicken or Beef Stock
1 Bay Leaf
1 – 1 1/2 tsp. Herbes de Provence
1 – 1 1/2 tsp. @McCormickVideos Peppercorn Medley Grinder
1 – 1 1/2 tsp. Sea Salt
1 tsp. MSG (Optional)
1/2 – 2 tbsp. Cornstarch or Flour (Optional)
2 tbsp. Cold Butter, Thinly Sliced
Bread for Croutons, As Desired
Gouda or Swiss Cheese, As Desired
In a heavy pot, cook the onions down in the fat. For this recipe, Ken used yellow, or Spanish, onions as they are traditional. However, red onions will have more depth of flavor. Ken notes you can mix the onions with the oil and cook them in the microwave to speed up the process. (Note: If you wish to caramelize the onions in the microwave, add a pinch of baking soda and stir every five minutes until the doneness you desire). When cooking the onions on a stove top, you will need to constantly stir them so they will not burn. The onion will be done when they are a chestnut color. If you like a thicker soup, you can add up to 2 tablespoons of flour to the onions right before they brown. Add in the wine to deglaze the pan. When brought back to a boil, add in the absinthe (if using sambuca or other anise-forward spirit, Ken recommends adding in 2 – 3 tablespoons of dry vermouth or 1 tablespoon of bitters) along with two cups of broth (Ken prefers chicken so as to not overwhelm the onion flavor), the bay leaf, the herbes de Provence, pepper, and salt. After about 5 to 7 minutes, add in another two cups of stock. Let this cook for another 5 to 7 minutes before adding in the last addition of the stock with the optional MSG. If you did not add flour into the soup beforehand, and you want the soup to be thicker, you can make a slurry using cornstarch and water. Be sure to slowly add the slurry as it thickens fast. If not thickening with flour or cornstarch, Ken used cold butter at the end to thicken his soup in the traditional French style of cooking. For this recipe, Ken did not bake the soup in an oven safe container. Instead, he made croutons with sourdough, placed gouda cheese over the soup, placed croutons on top of the cheese raft, topped with more cheese, and then torched the cheese on top before serving. This did can totally be made in a microwave; however it may lack the depth of flavor this stovetop version has.
Sassy Bone welcome back to the channel my name is Ken Johnson uh this is kind of a Life channel we don’t really have a niche here sometimes I cook sometimes I do artwork I’m award-winning artist uh sometimes I talk about books cuz I’m word with word winning author easy for
Me to say what are words uh sometimes you know fish hunt also I do a lot of cooking and today is no exception so one of my uh my viewers asked me a while back to do french onion soup cuz I done a chowder video so if you haven’t watched
The corn chowder watch that it’s a bacon and corn chow really good on a cold day but they asked me to do a french onion soup now I don’t do french onion soup in a traditional manner you call this Florida man fishing or Florida man uh french onion soup so
What I do is I do a New Orleans inspired by way of Japan french onion soup I hope you enjoy this episode and please make this dish for this recipe what I’m going to do is cut up about two 2 and 1 12 lbs of onions this
Is three lb bag of onions uh once I cut the ends of it off and get the outer layer and all that that’ll be roughly about 2 and 1/2 lb so I’ll use this whole bag so I’d say 3 lb total uh raw uh un undone once you’re done and it’s
Cut up it’ll it’ll quake to roughly about 2 and 1/2 lb 2 to 2 and 1/2 lb and you have to uh cut them in half after you peeled them and everything and then very thinly slice them I’ll show you that in a minute but um if you have a
Like one of those salad Shooters with a slicer or you have a food processor or a mandolin that would be a ideal uh solution for these unfortunately uh I I’ve got Ninja food processors but unfortunately ninja does not have the top load and so I don’t have anything that’s toploading where I
Just feed it in otherwise I’d let the um electric slicer do the work for me so I’m going to hand cut these and do them wa for thin and then uh we’ll get them started in the um cast IR uh Dutch oven when you’re cut an onion first thing you
Want to do is cut the tip off here next we’ll cut that tip now we’ll cut along here to get this first layer off like that next looking at top and the bottom see where all that it’s got two little parts right there trying to grow and
Then that what I’m going to do is I’m going to try to go right about here and cut this down then you just lay it down like that and make very thin slices just and what you do is you hold your knuckles uh don’t don’t have your fingers out tuck your knuckles
In so that you’re running the blade up against your knuckles like I said you want this to be way for thin super thin right here may look kind of like butter that’s Browning or whatever but that is actually chicken fat enough fat to cover the uh the bottom of this uh
Dutch oven now I got a mediation that I’ve got to do in a few minutes so what I’m going to do is get this up to heat and lit it and I’m going to turn off the heat and the reason why I’m doing that I’m going to let the steam continue
Cooking the onions and reducing them down while I’m doing my mediation after I’m done with my mediation I’ll continue cooking you don’t have to do this you can sit and stir for hours and hours and hours to get it started um another thing you can do is pop these in the microwave
Once you got them covered in oil put them in a microwave safe container pop them in the microwave and that’ll help you get a quick start on the caramelization process cuz that’s what we got to do now is make caramelized onions if you’ve ever done that before
You know that this can take a while um I do not use sugar uh I think that method is wrong to use and this will differ greatly from a normal uh french onion soup because uh I’m using a uh a New Orleans style method and so it does differ a
Little bit I’m using uh mostly chicken stock for my flavoring not beef I might use a little herbs to pron but that’s cuz my wife don’t like P that much I’m not putting time in there will put in Bay Lea we will use uh not
Her no but we’ll use some M so there’s going to be some differences from the traditional but it’s still pretty much a french onion and also I don’t like switch to I won’t be using through Year I’ll be using a uh Jud all right I’ve saled these for about
7 minutes now time to lid up and turn off the heat and then it will be fine sit here for a good 30 minutes hour up to 2 hours um that’s how long my mediation is and then I’ll come back it’s hard to see due to the condensation of steam but what’s
Happening here is that all the uh water is evaporating out and I’m slowly getting little brown spots on the bottom of my pan I’m trying to keep everything moving and from burning you need to go on a low heat as you’re doing this because this is creating all those
Caramelized notes due to the myard reaction you don’t know what myard reaction is that is nothing more than Browning it is when the sugars are breaking down and caramelizing in the onions I’ve turned down the heat as this is starting to caramelize starting to Brown now if you
Wanted to you could do this totally in the microwave you could put it in an oven safe container and put just a pinch of baking soda in here and stir it every 5 minutes until it caramelizes but this right here will give you a greater depth
Of uh flavor but if you have limited resources you could definitely do this with a microwave so this is cooked down to a chestnut color now I’m going to add in two cups of a dry kind of citrusy white wine now we’ll start de glazing the pan with
That so as we glaze the pan what I’m going to do is I’m going to take 3 tablespoons or 1 and 1/2 O A Maisto brand absin uh this is a New Orleans style uh uh caramelized onion dish the French onion soup and so uh New Orleans is
Definitely a perno town and since peroa is expensive uh CU you have to import it this right here is a great substitute so I’m going like I said I’m going to put the Maisto in there as the wine is cooking off now I’m adding in two cups of
Chicken stock that’s my first addition of chicken stock now if you don’t have perau or absent you can use sambuka uh uzo um basically any anise flavored spirit that you like and then add in about another 2 tablespoon of drrive REM going add in one bay leaf I’ll add in probably about a
Teaspoon teaspoon and a half of herbs deant I’m going to add in probably about a te teaspoon teaspoon and a half of mccormix peppercorn medley grinder uh if I was serving it for like a restaurant or something of like that or I was trying to be fancy I would use white
Peppercorn now I’m going to add in by a teaspoon of sea salt I’m adding in two more cups of chicken stock adding in two more cups of chicken stock for a total of six cups total totally optional but a teaspoon of MSG this stuff right here is what gives it
The backb it needs this is where you want to adjust for your seasonings I’ve already adjusted for seasonings this is a very thin soup if you wanted to thicken it up you could add a little bit of corn starch or mix you a little bit
Of flour and butter um what I’m going to do to finish it off is put a few Pats of cold butter at the very end um and that will thicken it up but for right now I’m going to turn this off as I devote my time to
Croutons as you might can tell nothing about this recipe is is authentic uh I take Liberties based off of uh what I’ve tasted in Louisiana and different places I think this soup does best not with French style baguettes done as a whole Crouton on top but rather cut up
My croutons with sourdough so if you hadn’t seen my sourdough bread recipe go watch it because this is how I make my sourdough at home I think it adds flavor and then I’m going to top it with some gouda we’ll torch it but uh I don’t like
Uh swiss cheese so Grier cheese is I add the question but um now I’m going to toast this off in the oven the sourdough croutons are ready now I’m going to incorporate about 2 tablespoon of butter cut up into little Pats I’ve turned this off but you
Can see it’s still bubbling and I’ll include the um cold butter in now and that will cause it to thicken up a little bit as the butter melts you can see it’s thickening up a little bit still going to be thin but not that thin um I’d say consistency of half and half
Milk maybe whole milk somewhere in between there is what you’re looking for so you still want be kind of a thin milk like consistency Julia Child um instead of using MSG she put in uh parmesan cheese so you could do that if you don’t want MSG but that’s something she did and she
Added flour to her um onions after they had browned and that would thicken it up so if you wanted to do flour and butter you could do that you could add corn starch but I like it a little thinner in keeping with the non-traditional theme put slice of guda on top before adding
Your croutons that’ll keep them from getting so soggy right before serving with that we put the croutons on put cheese on now l a bone tone Brule torch this very quickly just to melt it down there you go nice and torched getting toasty here you go my non-traditional New Orleans style esque
French onion soup and I got a little bit of uh roasted chicken on the side all right let’s get this Taste just obious little sweet got a good backbone to it pretty well Balanced this is the way that I like french onion soup this is my way it’s inspired on the New Orleans way which pretty much is God knows what no um the absent really does bring it out there’s a little anise at the very end very slight hint you could go as low
As um you know tablespoon and still get a good flavor 3 tablespoons is money from me if you want to do a happy medium do two you could do that this is your soup you make it any way you want to you know I I’ve already ate with the
Wife so this taste testing I already knew what it tasted like so cuz I i’ rather eat with my wife and then come back and talk to y’all after we’ve had our meal and one of the things I asked her I said do you have anything in
Critiques in comments that you want to share with the viewers and kind of held back a little bit and I was like what is it you know if it’s bad I want to know you say I put too much ABS in there you know whatever I don’t I have no ego I take
Criticism and she said I would never order this if we were going out because I would never get it this way so I think that’s High Praise um she liked it I love it uh on a cold day this is money so stump that is
How I do french onion soup thank you for asking me about it I was able to find absent um I wasn’t going to pay the perau prices but I got something with the Maisto there’s another dish it is very expensive to make so if this dish if this video gets 1,000 likes I
Need 1,000 likes I’ll make oysters absent Dome if you’ve ever been to Commander’s Palace you know what I’m talking about but that right there it cost her like 3/4 of a cup of absin plus the oysters plus puff pastry plus plus plus it’s a very expensive dish
Very extravagant dish I won’t do it like commanders does it will have my own take on it but I think you’ll like it with that please like share comment subscribe all that stuff it really does help out the channel I know I say all the time but it really does matter the the
Algorithm sees it differently than you just watching and then clicking on to another video If you subscribe they see you differently if you like they see you differently if you comment they see you differently and that all helps us to get a little bit more Revenue it’s just a
Tiny bit but a little bit more Revenue um so that we can get some of this paid off and you know kind of recoup summer rec cost here and there as we can uh with that thank you for all your support I really couldn’t do this without
Y’all’s help and I’ll see you again next time Bye Oh
2 Comments
Interesting.
Make a food native to your country!