Who doesn’t love French onion soup?
Well, as it turns out, two of our best friends, and, can you guess what I served them the first time we had them over for dinner?
Still, it has been years, and they keep coming back (just not for French onion soup), so no real harm done.
As a matter of fact, we had them over for Christmas dinner and served a very nice slow cooker ham, which everyone loved.
But then, what to do with the leftovers?
There is just so much ham salad even I can eat, so, off to da Google I went…
and found… what’s this? French onion soup with leftover ham?
Perfect! Well, for us, anyway.
And – I cannot stress this enough – toss out all of your other French onion soup recipes, because this one is the winner!
INGREDIENTS
Soup:
•4 tbsp unsalted butter
•8 cups sliced sweet onion
•10 oz leftover sliced ham
•1 tbsp flour
•6 cups unsalted chicken stock
•1/3 cup port
•1 tbsp Sherry Peppers Sauce*
•1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
•1 tsp Seasoned Salt
•1 tbsp sherry vinegar
Bread:
•Garlic toast slices
•Sliced Gruyère
*No Sherry Peppers Sauce? No Problem! Simply add a bit of decent sherry (none of that “cooking” stuff) and a dash or three of your fave hot sauce, to taste.
Melt the butter in a Dutch oven or other large pan over medium-high heat.
Add the onions, tossing to coat with the butter, and cook, stirring and tossing often, for ten minutes, until the onions are tender.
Set the heat to medium low and add the ham. Continue to cook, stirring the onions and turning the ham slices over every now and then for 40 minutes, until the onions are golden brown.
Remove the ham slices and shred.
Increase the heat to medium and continue to cook the onions for another 15 minutes or so, stirring often, until they are nicely caramelized.
Whisk 1/2 cup of the chicken stock together with the flour and the port in a small bowl.
Add to the onions and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring more or less constantly.
Add the remaining stock and the other ingredients, including the shredded ham, and bring to a boil.
Simmer for five minutes.
Keep the soup warm while you prepare the garlic toast slices – I used Texas Toast – (you will need one slice per bowl) according to package instructions, except, top each slice with some of the Gruyère for the last five minutes of cooking.
Place a slice of cheese-y garlic toast in the bottom of each soup bowl, then ladle onion soup over the top and serve.
*SIGH*
Such nice soup!
Note: this was more than enough for the two of us for a main course dinner, and then another three lunches or so.