Regarding Instant Pot French Onion Soup

First off, let me just say, I did not start this blog to write about cooking, even though the first and second blog posts have turned out to be about food. I am not a chef, I have no special culinary skills, nor the imagination to create my own recipes. I do, however, want to write about things about which I have 2₵ to say. This is the very thing that expert blog writers advise against; apparently I am supposed to find my niche and stick to it. I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m not out to be an expert….

Anyway, today I decided to tackle French Onion Soup with the new Instant Pot. I have never made French Onion Soup before, but Dear Husband and I both love it, and I happened across a simple enough recipe for the new Pot, so badda boom, let’s try it. (Hopefully there’s no actual boom!)

It’s about 2:30pm and I start taking out all the ingredients and prepping the kitchen. I review the recipe, courtesy of The Typical Mom. Onions (yellow and green), check.  Butter, salt, Worcestershire, thyme, beef broth, all check. I don’t have day old French bread, but I do have Mini Baguette Crisps by Ace Bakery, those will do. I’m also choosing to use Swiss instead of Mozza because I make my own choices. Gruyere would typically be used, but I don’t have that, and I probably couldn’t taste the difference if I was doing a blind-folded taste test, à la #birdbox.

I’ve also decided to make an elk roast with this dinner. French Onion Soup is great, but Dear Husband has been working all day and he loves him some meat. Santa put this Canadian Moose Seasoning in Dear Husband’s stocking last year, so I just season the roast up with that, give it a sear and throw it in a dish to bake. (For those wondering, yes I do know that moose and elk are not the same, however they are both mammals from the Cervidae family and I’m pretty confident that this spice does not include anything that can be used solely on moose meat. I'm pretty sure this spice, despite it's name, could be used on Reindeer as well *gasp*). Anyway.... I could cook this roast in the Instant Pot as well, but having only the one insert makes that seem like more trouble than it’s worth for right now.

But wait! I forgot the beauty of Instant Pot cooking. It’s fast!! And it’s still only 2:35pm at this point. This particular recipe, from start to finish, prep to filling my face, should only take approximately 15 minutes, 25 minutes if you're easily distracted like myself. So, I put the perishables back in the refrigerator and go live my life for a couple more hours….

Queue the classic song to signify time passing -- the Jeopardy theme song! For those who didn’t know, there are now a few episodes of Jeopardy available on Netflix! I feel that chemo has killed a few brain cells so I turn that on and try to hone my skills and kill some time. The Tournament of Champions series is streaming, so I feel really smart when I get one right! (Truth be told, I wouldn’t have known any more of those answers pre-chemo either).

A sufficient amount of time passes then I’m back in the kitchen, albeit a little bit more knowledgeable. I have my ingredients, again, and I am ready to cook, again!

I melt the butter in the Instant Pot using the sauté feature, as directed, however I then sear my elk roast in the Pot and that same butter. Searing helps to lock in all that natural meatiness of flavour, or so I’ve gathered from watching MasterChef. Doing so in the same pan that I’m about to cook the soup in can only add more flavour to the broth.

Then I take to chopping the onions, a taunting task. No, it is not The Onion Memory that makes me cry, it is indeed the actual onions, and cry I did.

Once upon a time, a college professor asked me to analyse this poem:

Real onion tears

“It is the onion, memory,
that makes me cry.
Because there's everything and nothing to be said,
the clock with hands held up before its face,
stammers softly on, trying to complete a phrase--
while we, together and apart,
repeat unfinished festures got by heart.”

The Onion Memory, by Craig Raine

Don’t ask me what that means; I’ve always been way too literal to interpret poetry. I can vaguely remember the same professor reprimanding me when I said the poem was about onions. If you read the poem, please feel free to comment below on what you think it means.... I'm pretty sure I received the lowest grade I ever received in the class with this confounded poem. Additionally, seriously, is "festures" even a word?

Side note: Some of you may be thinking: "hey, that looks like way more than three onions chopped" and you would be correct. I cannot cook for two, so there will be leftovers in my freezer.

Carrying on, this particular recipe tells me that if I have thyme, oops sorry, TIME, than I can caramelize the onions. Well, I have both time and thyme, so that is exactly what I do. The caramelizing process took longer than my scheduled 15 minute cook time, but it should make a difference. From what I understand, caramelizing brings out the natural sugars in the onions. I don't have quite enough patience to fully complete the caramelizing process, and since it was listed as optional, I don't stress about it. 

Partially caramelized

Into the Pot goes the beef broth, I seal the lid onto the Pot, say my little prayer  that this time will not be the time the Pot explodes, and set the timer as advised. It takes a number of minutes for the Pot to pressure up, something which was not mentioned in the recipe instructions, so I spend about 10 minutes wondering if I did it right or if I did in fact create a bomb. But then the timer starts to count down from 3 minutes. Crisis averted. 

Once the three minutes has completed, I do a quick release, prepare the buns (horseradish for me, not for Dear Husband), and cut the roast (which has been resting for a bit now). When safe to do so, I remove the pressure cooker lid, ladle the soup into crockery bowls, top with the crusty baguettes, Swiss cheese, and green onion, throw in the oven under broil for 5 minutes. Then, presto, dinner is served!

In future, I think I will attempt to make my own beef broth (probably out of elk, moose or deer, so not beef at all) instead of buying pre-made. There are an abundance of directions on how to make broth in the Instant Pot as well, and I bet I could make a pile of it and freeze for future use. The heart of French Onion Soup is the broth, so the better that is, the better the soup. Overall it was good enough, perhaps a little sweet, but that could be down to the onions. Also, I think that wine is often added to the broth when making this particular type of soup. No offense to The Typical Mom, by the name I’d guess she’s cooking for kids, but in my opinion, wine makes things better, so next time I make French Onion Soup, there will be wine.