Guinness & Onion Soup with Irish Cheddar Crouton

As we get back into testing new recipes at MIHM, we thought it would be fun to find a guiding theme. We decided it would be fun to try making internationally inspired foods. So first, stop - Ireland! I found this recipe for Guinness and Onion Soup on the Food Network website. I thought the Guinness part sounded interesting, and the cheddar crouton couldn't be bad, so my mom gathered all of the ingredients and we got started.

Ingredients, including SO many onions.

 

Yeah, you read the recipe correctly - 8 cups of sliced onions. As a courtesy to our readers, we're giving this recipe a health and safety warning for this onion job. We are both pretty sensitive to onions and had to take multiple breaks out of the kitchen to give our crying eyes a break. The sacrifices we make for this blog, I swear...

 

I minced the garlic as my mom battled the onions.

Garlic, onions and olive oil heating up. (It's a miracle this photo turned out so well since I was blinded by the onions while photographing!)

 

Next up, I added one bottle of Guinness to the garlic and onions and let it reduce down to half. Immediately the entire kitchen switched from the aroma of onions, to a strong smell of beer. :)

Beef broth added, then the soup simmered for 10 minutes.

 

While the soup was cooking, my mom preheated the broiler, which isn't something we cook with a lot. I don't even think I have a broiler at my apartment? No clue. I toasted the French bread for the cheddar crouton. I tried a few times because I didn't want the bread to be too toasted, as it would get cooked more in the broiler.

 

My mom sliced the Irish Cheddar. By the way, if you've never tried Irish Cheddar you need to stop reading this blog and go buy some right now. It is SO GOOD. Soft, with a little tang. Delicious, delicious! My new favorite cheese.

 

Once the broiler was ready and the soup had simmered for 10 minutes, we ladled it into oven proof bowls. We weren't totally sure at the time that these were oven proof; thankfully they are. :)

 

Bread added to the soup...

 

Cheese layered on the bread...

 

Cooking for about 10 minutes, until the cheese melted completely.

 

The final product!

 

My mom, brother and I ate the soup right out of the broiler, as the recipe said you must eat it piping hot. And although we all enjoyed the soup, we agreed that we didn't need to make it again. The recipe was easy to follow, and there wasn't anything out of the ordinary about the ingredients. But that was just it. Once you ate the cheesy bread crouton, it tasted like your standard French Onion Soup, with a slight hint of beer in it. Not bad, just not exactly original either. Which makes sense, this is basically the Irish version of French Onion Soup. So it made for a good cooking blog night, and was overall pretty tasty, but it's not going to become a staple around our house.  

 

See you guys next week when we will be reporting on a MIHM field trip!