Better than the French stuff.
I once had a girlfriend who strung me along while she was still in love with a Frenchman, leaving me with a healthy displeasure of France and all things French. I happily adopted the etymological advancement of the Freedom Fry, despite the political stigma associated with the phrase, and I swore a vow determined to implement a soup that could stand against a classic.
Ingredients
- onion
- olive oil
- beef stock
- salt and pepper
- thyme
- cheeses, Gruyère, mozzarella, parmesan
- croutons
Method
First you must possess the ingredients that comprise this dish, and it gives me great pleasure to say that the easiest way to start this recipe is by chopping the onions—lots of them. Now you can use your fancy-dancy onion chopper, and I promise not to make fun of you for it this time, but I still take pride in knowing that I can accomplish this onion-chopping task using only a simple machine that runs mostly on an imprecise mixture of corn and potatoes. There is no specific method by which you must chop the onions, and other than peeling them first, I have no recommendation except to avoid dicing them too finely since they must cook for so long and will eventually turn into an unidentifiable—yet tasty—mush; I aim for slivers about an inch long and maybe you should, too.
When I make Mercken onion soup, I try to fill up a five-quart stainless-steel pot with onions, so it’s hard to tell you how many onions to chop. It could be a couple two-three pounds; maybe five, or four big ones if you have them.
When you’ve filled your pot with chopped onions you should feel overwhelmed by the amount of chopped onions you have created; if you don’t possess a moderate amount of doubt that all the onions will cook down, then you’ve not chopped enough onions. You really want to strive for a meniscus of onions—an onion meniscus.
At this point if you took me seriously about the onion meniscus you probably have too many onions to handle, so put some in Tupperware to store in the refrigerator for the next time you need onions, and you could save yourself hours. If someone asks why you are storing chopped onions in the refrigerator just give them an eyeroll and motion wildly with open palms to the concave structure heating up on the stove.
Now we’re going to have to get some oil on these onions and there are a few ways you can approach this. The first way is to pour olive oil all over the onions in the pot and use a spatula or wooden spoon to mix them around for an even coat. The other way is to pour your chopped onions into a separate mixing bowl and melt a stick of unsalted butter for added flavor and low-density lipoproteins. If you already melted the butter before reading the part about the low-density lipoproteins and want to redress, then simply pour the butter into the garbage and line the pot with half an inch of olive oil instead.
Start by putting some of the chopped onions into the pot with the olive oil and turn up the heat to medium as you mix them around with the oil. When you hear the oil beginning to simmer, put the rest of the chopped onions into the pot and douse them with more olive oil. You will continue to stir the onions with your utensil of choice, adding more olive oil as necessary to ensure they are good and greased up—like a pig in the south on the Fourth of July, or a mouthpiece arriving at Mar-a-Lago for anointment.
It helps to sprinkle a touch of salt and black pepper over the onions as you stir them, and I like to go heavier here on the black pepper than the salt. You can lift the soup later with more salt, if necessary, but the black pepper needs to cook into onions as they reduce over the next hour. There is probably some science behind this, but I don’t know what it is, and it shouldn’t really matter, because all science is in this case is the observation of magic. Who’s to say that God isn’t miraculously transforming the black pepper grinds into lifeless vessels devoid of all essential flavor since they lent it to the greater good, and here we are with “science” trying to track God’s steps and create a definition for the undefinable? Can we just agree that it’s simply more fun to put the black pepper in now to see it contrast against the whiteness of the onions as you continue sprinkling more?
However you choose to view the world, you will need to reduce the heating element on your stovetop, (I’m assuming you’ve not been doing this all on an open flame thus far), to a lower medium heat while you continue stirring these onions as they cook down. Cooking the onions on a low heat helps you regulate the speed at which they brown; you want to ease them up to the perfect color slowly no matter how many hours it takes. This could be fortunate or unfortunate, depending on your worldview, but you will need to continue stirring these onions the whole time without walking away. The reasons this could be unfortunate are obvious—having to stand for so long; not being able to do anything else for a while; the inability to work on other hobbies—but the reasons this could be fortunate are sometimes more difficult to see. For example, less than seven hundred words back I took a few weeks off after writing about the onion meniscus; I felt clever for coining the term but found it challenging to choose a word that would convey whatever the opposite of a meniscus is since the idea of trying to stir down an onion meniscus is absurd. I came back with a rested mind and as you know by now decided to use the word “concave” which is an adjective, not a noun like meniscus, so I had to use a noun like “structure” which I’m still not happy with. I suppose I could have just discarded the part about the onion meniscus because you can’t have a concave meniscus and there is no word for it. Anyway, my point is that one of my best friends suddenly died during my writing break, and the reasons why the time it will take you to stir down all these onions are fortunate, is because it forces you into a situation where it makes sense to call someone you love just to talk with them. You could also listen to a podcast.
As the onions wilt you will begin to think you’ve done enough but I encourage you to continue until they have a dark caramelization that’s consistent all throughout. When they are mushy and less than a quarter of the size that they once were you can reduce the heat to a low-warm and walk away for a while because you’ve done well. I prefer to continue at this point because you should never leave well enough alone when it comes to a quick six-hour recipe; pour the beef stock into the pot with your sautéed onions and revel in how it sizzles, let that pungent beef-flavored steam float up in your face and fog your glasses—don’t you hate that?
How much beef stock you need will depend on the ratio of onion to liquid you desire, but if you started with five quarts of chopped onions then you will probably want to use about eight or ten cups of beef stock. Apparently, stock is boiled with bones in it which makes it better than broth. Don’t ask me. I’m not a scientist, just a believer.
Once you’ve constituted a soup with the beef stock and onions it’s time to add specifically exact amounts of herbs. All a Mercken soup needs is thyme—a simple homophonic joke that can, when interpreted with a homophonic contraction, serve as a metaphor for the growing pains to which society contributes our eventual marriage. Other people add oregano or bay leaves; I’ve heard of people adding nutmeg and even garlic powder. It’s bedlam. Stop. But if you must then I will promote freedom for you to do soever as you shall please. Some people even add brandy or cognac—I make no accusation of alcoholism but you’re not getting any majorly appealing flavors from the alcohol that you claim just “burns off.” If it burns off, then why add it? For the flavor? What flavor? It burned off. Enough with your circular logic! I know some people will say the alcohol affects the food on a molecular level, but we are into magic. Remember? Not science.
When you finish mixing in the correct amounts of herbs and seasonings go ahead and bring the pot of soup to a boil for a couple of minutes before reducing it to a low heat where it can simmer bubble-free for at least an hour.
If you find yourself wanting to be miss fancy pants you could make your own bread, but if you ever want to serve dinner on time then you must cut corners sometimes; however, I do recommend splurging on a block of gruyere and grating it yourself because we’re not monsters, we deserve some nice things. Everybody wants the good shit in life and grating your own cheese puts you on the same level as the one percent, since that’s also how they get their cheese. Except they have someone to grate it or them, so never mind, pre-shredded cheese is fine.
Sprinkle some white shredded cheese into a bowl of this soup along with a handful of croutons and you will be eating a Mercken onion soup.
