Cooking school for kids: Onions and garlic

This week: French Onion Soup and Cheesy Garlic Bread

So I started looking for a curriculum framework for this cooking class. I decided I’d stick with going through foodstuffs, starting with the fundamentals and then moving into other combinations and exotics further down the line. I reasoned that they’d have to pick up fundamental physical skills so they might as well get a little schooling in fundamental flavors at the same time.

What’s more fundamental than garlic and onions? Nothing. Unless you’re a devout Buddhist, in which case my class has very little to offer you, because we’re also doing meat. Sorry.

Onions

As a sack of onions was a whopping $.59, it was an easy choice for chopping practice: uneven shape (so they have to figure out how to stabilize), slicing practice (regular cuts), and using the whole produce item (chop everything up, even the strangely-shaped bits). But then, the obvious question: what do you do with a mountain of onions?

Caramelize them, that’s what. Melt the butter, toss the onions to coat, salt them a bit, and cover to sweat. Leave them to soften about 10 minutes. Uncover, and stir every 5-10 minutes. The moisture will help you scrape the fond off the bottom which will, in turn, add color to the onions. They should be golden brown by about the 40 minute mark. Try one – if you like how they taste at this point, you’re done! If you want them darker, keep stirring every 5 minutes or so until you get them the way you like.

At this point, you can either put them away, or start turning them into soup.

Option A: Freeze in 1/4 cup portions. Keeps for a long time in the freezer.
Option B: Heat up 8 cups of stock. Get out some flour, and stir it into the onions. Cook for a minute or two, and start ladling in the stock. Once the two are combined, let simmer for 15-20 minutes.