French Onion Pho

Mission: Revamp the classic French Onion Soup

To re-imagine French Onion Soup, we first need figure out its core essence by cooking and tasting it ourselves. Is it the sweet, caramelized onions? The savory beef broth? The herb-y croutons? What makes an onion soup, an onion soup? How far can we take this before our instructors just shake their heads at us?

After brainstorming for a bit, we developed some concepts:

Our “two-star” ideas:

• French Onion Bruschetta
• French Onion Pho

Our “one-star” ideas:

• French Onion Pot Pie
• French Onion Cheese Fondue
• Cream of Onion and Mushroom Soup
• French Onion Rings
• Onion Crackers and Cheese Plate
• French Onion Kebabs

We started off by cooking the original dish according to the recipe.

We started making the soup the true French way — from scratch (including the croutons, of course!)

I once had a teacher who proclaimed that French restaurants were superior to those in the states. When someone in the class inevitably asked why, she said the French would never dare to buy croutons and we were much too lazy here. With that in mind, we made our own croutons, of course.

Joe had never made French Onion Soup before, but we had a lot of fun with it

After taking forever on the stove, we finally got to taste our finished product. It was savory, sweet and aromatic but at its core, it was comfort food that would be perfect to come home to on a cold, winter’s day.

The soup was delicious. I ended up eating as many bowls as my stomach could hold.

Now that we’ve gotten the chance to taste French Onion Soup, we’re going to go back to brainstorm even more and make a dish that will blow the judges away.

We then invited some of our friends over and try out our new recipes. All of the dishes in this round were French inspired but served in various ways. One of our favorite ideas was to do French Onion Bruschetta, but the acidic nature of the tomatoes didn’t pair well with the other ingredients. It lost the comforting nature that both of us enjoyed so much.

We thought that the heirloom tomatoes might be contributing to the sour taste but Big Boy tomatoes got the same results.

With some of the spare ingredients, we decided to top just about everything we could find with the taste of French Onion Soup. Later on, we tried the same ingredients in mac and cheese, sandwiches, and many other dishes.

The toast was fun and easy but ultimately not that exciting.

One of Kate’s roommates stopped by to see our projects unfold. A picky eater, she shyly asked if it was okay if she just had a Ritz cracker. We both laughed and told her to take as many as she wanted. Later on, she decided to try one of the crackers with all the toppings, then devoured a whole plateful before we got a chance to capture those crackers on camera.

Crackers that were topped with havarti, gruyere, caramelized onions, green onions and fresh parsley

We also made a delicious fondue, it was a bit too thick but incredibly tasty.

All the thumbs up!

We liked playing with the form of French Onion Soup, but we decided to see if we could combine other flavors and make dishes that combined everything we loved about French Onion Soup with the bold flair of Pho and Chili.

Our attempt at combining chili and French Onion Soup

For the first, we thickened up the broth with a roux, and added chili powder, cayenne, green and red peppers, and some other typical western ingredients. This one was topped off with buttermilk biscuits mixed with gruyere cheese to emulate that some sort of topping that you’d expect from a French Onion soup. The outcome of this one wasn’t that great. It was similar to a chili minus the tomatoes and the beef, and it just didn’t feel like mixing western chili and French onion soup was anything that special.

A pho without anise or fresh herbs is just a shame — we knew we could redeem ourselves.

For the second, we tried to emulate pho, but it fell short. One of the predominant pieces of feedback we received was that we needed to focus on the fresh herbs and spices inherent to a pho. So that would be the focus of our next big test, the in-class feedback session. Although the pho didn’t meet our expectations, we still loved the idea and decided to move forward with it and attempt to perfect the dish.

In the feedback lab we focused on trying to capture that fresh herb taste in the broth that people felt was missing. The stars of the show this time were the herbs; the broth was made with mint, cilantro, and lemongrass to try and utilize the common herbs of a pho.

Additionally, we tried adding in pickled daikon radish, carrots, and red onion as toppers to the pho and to the broth we added green onions and thicker rice noodles.

It felt like shame to get rid of the vibrant pickled vegetables, but ultimately, we needed our dish to taste like a dream.

The picked vegetables were much too sour and distracting, so we decided to ditch them. The judges were surprised that we managed to pull off getting both the taste of French Onion Soup and Pho in the dish. It was delicious but not perfect quite yet, we still had more work to do.

It’s the night before our presentation.

We put our game faces on and worked to perfect our French Onion Pho. In our previous tests, we proved that we could get both the French Onion Soup and Pho taste to shine together but the dish needed another round of refinement to bring the presentation and flavors to perfection.

Joe stares at the camera with the momentous intensity of the moment.

We tried flavor after flavor. Our first bowl started off slow then left a bitter aftertaste — we added some more herbs and that was broken down.

Kate, on the other hand, seems surprisingly cheerful as she plays with the dish.

Then we found that the soup lacked the bright, fresh feeling of a pho and felt drowned out by the rich taste of caramelized onions. A bit of lemon juice (which was substituted with lime juice in the final dish) and tripling the amount of fresh herbs made all the difference. We tried more variations but none of them seemed quite right.

Something was still missing…

It tasted fine, but it wasn’t the type of dish that you would crave or devour in one sitting. Joe’s roommate stopped by, took a taste and told us our French Onion Soup tasted a lot like Pho. We laughed at the victory, but then she added that it needed a bit more salt. That along with a little bit of oregano and soy sauce made all the difference.

Some careful carving produced a beautiful lotus flower from an onion.

This was suddenly a dish that was both incredibly beautiful and tempting — we devoured our victory then rested for the morning of judgement.

Morning struck and it was time to build our final dish. Our backpacks were heavy with dishes and ingredients but we were proud to show what we had accomplished.

We served our pho with chopsticks and a duck spoon

Just so you can taste the masterpiece yourself, we included the recipe. ;)

Ingredients —

Package of thick rice noodles

2 Large Sweet Yellow Onions

4 Tablespoons of butter

Broth:

5 Cups of Vegetable Stock, 2 Pinches of Oregano, 1 Pinch of Dried Parsley, Allspice and Cinnamon, 1 to 2 Cloves of Garlic (Minced), 1 Tablespoon of sliced green onion, 4–6 Sprigs of Cilantro, 2–3 Sprigs of Mint, 1 inch of Lemon Grass, 1/8th teaspoon of Soy Sauce, 1 Bay Leaf, 1 Drop of Anise Extract, 1 Teaspoon of Lime Juice (Fresh Squeezed), 1 Teaspoon of ground ginger, 1 Tablespoon of Salt

Directions:

1. Melt all the butter in a pan, slice the onions relatively thin, and cook them until they’re nice and caramelized at a relatively low heat. Slowly turn them into a melting mass.
2. Once the onions are nice and brown, which should take an hour to an hour and a half, add in the vegetable stock, and get it boiling, then bring it to a simmer.
3. Once simmering, add in the rest of the broth components, and let simmer for ten to twenty minutes so as to let the herbs soak in, stirring occasionally.
4. As the broth is simmering, bring a second pot filled with water to a boil, and add the noodles. Cook for 6 to 8 minutes (or per package instructions)
5. Combine the noodles and broth in a bowl when it’s all done, be sure to add two to three parts broth per noodles!
6. Serve!

Since we kept the pho pretty mild, we included a small dish of hot sauce to add to taste.

Our final display of garnishes, minus a few lime wedges that the judges used.

We sighed with relief as the judges complimented the display and expressed delight in the melody of flavors. Fist bumps were exchanged as we congratulated each other on a job well done.