Better than French Onion Soup- Smoke & Spice

I bought this cookbook for Shawn not long after he got his smoker.  Its a damn good cookbook, with great recipes, explanations, and variations.  Easter dinner was a few days ago and, at Shawn's request, we made a tray of smoked mac & cheese.  I was baking the ham and we were left with an interesting and not often found situation: an empty tray on the smoker.  I have to say, I was giddy about this.  What a fun opportunity to try something out!!  I poured through the book, looking at side dishes and options.  I settled on this French Onion soup variation mainly because Shawn loves the soup.  The recipe calls for smoked onions, which can easily be done.  At first, I tried to figure out the timing of the recipe, to allow the onions to be smoked and the soup to be made with enough time for it to be an appetizer.  We eventually decided that we had enough food for the meal and I simply smoked up the onions and a few heads of garlic for future use. 

This process was amazingly simple and something that I'll probably do whenever we have a spare tray for a few hours.  I rubbed the whole, unpeeled onions, and whole, unpeeled, heads of garlic with a touch of oil and they were ready.  Easy enough, right?  They sat in the smoker for a little over an hour and probably could have been in for up to 45 minutes longer without affecting the ingredients.  Peeling them was interesting.. I let them sit for about an hour to cool.  The oil on the onions and the moisture from smoking them made them a little slippery.  I would use a sharper knife next time, to save on the effort, and just be super careful.  The garlic was simply gorgeous and I can't wait to figure out what I'm going to do with it. 

Two days later I had completely forgotten about these items sitting in my fridge.  I went to heat up some leftover escarole with garlic as a snack and it occured to me that the onions would make a tasty addition to my snack.  In case you're curious, it was.  The onion was still a little firm, but the sweetness was perfect.  No bitterness at all, just tasty sweet onion.  I remembered my original thought, to make the onion soup, and realized that the day old slices of bread that came with the escarole would be the perfect soup crouton!  Pure genius!  I quickly changed up our original dinner plans and we went forward with the new one. 

I started by heating up my non stick dutch oven.  This is one of my absolute favorite pans and it was totally free with an Acme promotion last year.  Go figure.  Anyways, I heated up the pan and added the sliced onions for a touch.  Once they started sweating, I added a 1/4 cup of merlot and let it sautee in for a few minutes.  The recipe calls for homemade beef stock.  I didn't have that, but had about 3 cups worth of homemade pork stock so I used it instead.  I needed 3 more cups of broth and only had one can of beef broth and one can of chicken, so basically my soup was a potpourri of meat flavoring.  I added a tablespoon of barbeque sauce, even though I thought it strange, and some dried thyme, smoked salt, and black pepper.  Let it all simmer for almost an hour and tried it out.  It needed... something.  That something was a touch more red wine and a little more salt.  Perfect!! 

To make the actual soup, I pulled out 2 soup crocks that were given to us as a gift years ago.  I love these two bowls because I know they're oven friendly and they have the little handles on the sides that make it so easy to transfer from oven to countertop.  The handles cool very quickly, too, which is great.  I added the soup to each bowl and topped it with the stale bread.  I topped with a slice of provolone cheese and then sprinkled shredded swiss on top.  It went in the broiler for a few minutes and was finished. 

A lot of the broth soaked up into the bread, so I added more to my bowl to compensate for it about halfway through my meal.  The broth was really tasty!  The red wine gave it just the right balance and the BBQ sauce and black pepper gave a light touch of heat.  The bread and cheese were amazing, as all bread and melted cheese is.  The only thing I would change is that there were too many onions.  They were tasty, but it was too much in proportion to everything else.  Overall, I'd call the soup a success!

Given my current pregnancy and various degrees of laziness and queasiness, I've been making efforts to freeze meals whenever possible.  Instead of keeping the soup for leftovers, I froze the remainder for a future meal and will probably add more beef broth when I heat it up.  Looking forward to a quick and easy meal in my future!

Better than French Onion Soup- Smoke & Spice
Serves 4 as a main course, or 6 as appetizers
4 medium onions
vegetable oil
6 cups beef stock, preferably homemade
1/4 cup dry red wine
1 Tbsp not-too-sweet BBQ sauce
1 tsp dried thyme
salt to taste
1/4 tsp black pepper
4 slices crusty bread
1 cup shredded Gruyere cheese

1.  About 3 hours before you plan to eat the soup, prepare the smoker for barbequing, bringing the tem to 200-250F.
2.  Rub the onions with a thin coating of oil and place them in the smoker.  Cook until the skins are well browned and the onions feel soft, about 1 1/2 hours.  When the onions are cool enough to handle, peel them and slice them thin.
3.  Place the onions in a saucepan and add the stock, wine, sauce, thyme, salt & pepper.  Simmer for 45 minutes.
4.  Preheat the broiler.  Toast the bread. 
5.  Spoon the hot soup into 4 ovenproof bowls.  Top each portion of soup with a piece of toast and some of the cheese.  Broil briefly until the cheese is melted.  Serve immediately.