French Onion Soup starts it off

It’s a new year, a new day…ready to divide and conquer family recipes and take them to the ultimate food tasting level at Vancouver and Sherwood Park’s Test Kitchen.

Car sends me our latest quest: French Onion Soup. This is a good way to ease into 2008. A soup! A soup comprised of onions and broth, pretty easy – so I think to myself. This soup is actually one of the easier comfort foods I can think of making; however, on Sunday the task proved to be a bit more challenging. Believe it or not, I hadn't made this before even though it is one of my favorites.

First off, I need French Onion Soup bowls. I mean, how can you make this soup without the bowls? I barely, I mean barely made it into a kitchen store as its closing that afternoon, and probably paid double what I needed, however they are nice, good quality bowls that would be put to the test in mere hours!

The recipe Car provided was for one serving, but hey, it’s easy to double a recipe – so I think to myself. Well, only if you can read the recipe correctly...

After cutting up my onions, watching them carmelize, and taking in the fragrant mouthwatering smell, I get out my beef broth. Mmph-- 25% less salt. I already know I am not going to like less salt in my broth for this one, but that’s alright because I can always adjust the seasonings when done. Just then I add too much garlic salt. Hah! I was doubling and then miscalculated my doubling of what I read. Apparently can’t read.

I eventually end up tweaking and adjusting ad nauseum between various amounts of salt, OXO(because 25% less salt doesn’t cut it!) and sugar. It was reminiscent of a bad hairdo that you can’t leave alone and you keep adding too much product until then it feels like you need to wash and start over. Well, I guess it wasn’t that bad…but at the time it felt like it. The recipe testing pressure was too much! Then to top top off the average experience thus far, I had Romano cheese to melt on top which wasn’t any of the cheese options that Car provided like swiss, etc. I did; however, get the toasted french bread right.

In the end, I felt like a cheat on this recipe test but it was all worth it when the spoon hit my mouth. Yummy, cheesey, onion tasty goodness.