Our Mediocre Thoughts

👨‍🍳 Trevor: French onion soup is delicious. This attempt at French onion soup was delicious. Do you know what isn’t delicious? Failure. Our stock tasted fine, our soup tasted fine, but I can’t help but feel like we failed at the stock because of the insane amount of lost liquid.

I knew going into this that making beef stock just for the purpose of using it to make French onion soup wouldn’t be worth it, but I was excited nonetheless to try making stock as it’s something I’ve never done before. I was kind of hoping that there would be enough leftover stock to take some home. But there wasn’t. Because we were impatient. And that’s what bothers me. Had we planned a bit better, we might have been able to get a better yield. But instead, we spent 5+ hours and $25-$30 (and that’s not counting the price of onions, bread, cheese, or the wine) to get just enough beef stock for one meal of French onion soup — granted there were four us to feed, but still.

I do plan on making stock again, but next time I’ll start early in the morning and let it cook low and slow for a good chunk of the day in order to maximize the amount of stock I get. I also wouldn’t make the stock for the sole purpose of making French onion soup unless I was really trying to impress someone. I’d prefer to either have pre-made stock on hand, or just go with the store bought stuff.

👩‍🍳 Brittany: Before making French onion soup with Trevor, I’d only ever had it once or twice at Boston Pizza. (You can laugh if you want.) Their French onion soup is decent, I guess... but homemade French onion soup is a million times better! It’s easy to make if you use store-bought beef stock, and I’d say it tastes pretty similar compared to using homemade stock. Don’t get me wrong, French onion soup with homemade beef stock tastes better, but not omigodimustforevermakeitwithhomemadebeefstocknow better.

If I didn’t cry so easily cutting onions, I’d probably make French onion soup more often. And if I found myself having more leftover beef bones and beef trimmings, I’d also probably make homemade beef stock more often (buying ingredients for stock seems silly). For now, I’ll be sticking with Better Than Bouillon.