The onions are that is! LOL..I crack myself up!

My sister-in-law, Doreen, sent me a recipe for Roasted Chicken with Classic or Curry Soubise from Serious Eats….that she’d had at a friend’s home, so I decided to try it. I didn’t have any chicken at the time, but I had shrimp, so I thought why not just make the sauce for the shrimp instead…and it was great! This set me off on a week-long onion-obsessed food fest!

Here’s the recipe from Serious Eats for just the Soubise…aka onion sauce….how did I not know about this recipe sooner!!

Soubise

2 TB butter
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups heavy cream (I didn’t use this much…but I also used less onions ’cause it’s just me)
1 tsp curry powder (optional)

Melt butter over medium heat until foaming. Add onions and cook, stirring frequently, until softened and most liquid has evaporated,  about 20 minutes. Stir in the cream and simmer for 5 minutes.

Transfer the hot onion & cream to a blender (I used my nutri-bullet) and blend, starting at low speed and gradually increasing to high, until smooth. The texture should be thicker than most sauces, but not a puree. You can pass it through a fine-mess strainer if you want it creamier. The recipe has the optional 1 tsp curry powder that I really liked (it gives it just a hint of curry spice flavor..not overpowering at all), but also made it later in the week without the curry and it was just as good…and one I’m going to make it for my next steak dinner, that I anticipate will be DElish!

My sister, Mariellen, got me the new Chrissy Teigen cookbook, Cravings: Hungry for More. It’s not just a really good recipe book, but she is so F-ing funny that her commentary is priceless…example: she adds “DFWI” in her instructions on some recipes “Don’t Fuck With It!” I had so much fun just reading it…and every recipe looks good!

So as I was going through it, I saw on page 130 a recipe for “Crispy Shallots & Shallot Oil” that intrigued me….and the picture looked amazing. It’s so easy that I’ve literally made them three times this past week, and experimented with regular onions and garlic too.

Here you go…

1 cup thinly sliced shallots
1 cup canola oil
kosher salt

Scatter shallots evenly in an 8×8 glass dish (pyrex). Pour the oil over the shallots and microwave on high until the shallots are browned and crispy, 6-8 minutes. Quickly, and carefully, drain the shallots in a fine mesh sieve set over a bowl to catch the oil. Transfer shallots to paper towels and season with salt. Let cool completely.

The recipe says they’ll keep for a week in an airtight container, but I never have any leftover to store…they are that good! The oil is great for salads..or pizza…store in fridge.

Here are my tweeks to the recipe. I didn’t measure anything because I didn’t have a cup of shallots, so I just poured oil over to coat them (a cup seems like a lot). I love them so much that I thought…why not regular onions…or garlic. I did both! The regular onions were great and the garlic is good and crispy, but a little more bitter than when I fry them in a saucepan really slowly. I think they’ll still be good for pizza monday and the onions are amazing on pizza! 6-9 minutes was too much for my microwave…and I used less shallots…so here are the times I used for all three.

Shallots…5 minutes (remove immediately from oil…or 4 1/2 minutes and let them continue to cook a bit in the hot oil.)
Onions…7 1/2 minutes
Garlic…3 1/2 to 4 minutes

Just remember that the oil is hot and they’ll continue to cook after you remove from microwave….so remove from oil right away or let them simmer a bit if they’re not quite done.

Here’s the shrimp with soubise…with crispy shallots sprinkled on top…YUMMYYYY!

Bon Appetit!

You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!