French Onion Soup Topped with Montasio Cheese Soufflé
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 Hi there, my name is Chef Bill Briwa. I'm an instructor here at the Culinary Institute of
00:04 America and today we're going to be making onion soup. A classic recipe, it's pretty easy to do,
00:10 but what really makes this dish special is I'm going to top it with a cheese souffle.
00:15 And that cheese souffle is made with a very special cheese, Montasio. Now Montasio is from
00:22 northern Italy, from the mountainous regions of northern Italy. This cheese is made from raw milk
00:27 and any raw milk cheese has to be aged for at least 60 days, but this one typically by the
00:32 time it comes to the United States has been aged for four or five months. It is a cheese that when
00:38 it's young is kind of fruity, but when it gets older it gets more full flavored and it's appropriate
00:44 for a dish just like the one we're making today. Let's get started. We're going to cook these
00:49 sliced onions right here in a big shallow pan with some oil and I've got the pan nice and hot. The
00:57 oil is going to go in. It heats up quickly and as soon as it begins to smoke a little bit in goes
01:05 the onions. Now what I would tell you about this is that there's an ingredient in this recipe that
01:14 you need to take seriously and that is patience. You need to get these onions nice and brown and
01:21 the problem that you will have is if you stir them too often they begin to mat together and that
01:28 traps moisture in there and that prevents browning. So let them be nice and light like this
01:34 and just check the bottom every now and then. You can expect this pan of soup to take 10-15 minutes
01:42 worth of browning, but what you're looking for is a color that is like a deep walnut color,
01:49 something like this right here and it takes time. Once you get the onions browned to that
01:55 level then I would deglaze the pan with a little bit of white wine. I would add thyme and bay.
02:03 I would simmer it with chicken stock and after about 15 minutes I would say your soup just
02:09 needs to have a little bit of seasoning and it's done. Take a look at this. You can see the level
02:14 of browning that I expect in the onions and you can see the finished soup right here that has a
02:21 deep, deep rich color and flavor. I'm going to start what a chef would call the appareil for
02:28 the souffle. This is the basis of the souffle and it starts with a roux which is nothing more than
02:36 butter and flour and you put those two things together in a pan and as you cook it an interesting
02:44 thing happens. The butter melts, it coats the starch granules so that later on when we try to
02:51 thicken that starch the granules are separated by fat and it won't clump up. For our purposes
02:58 we're going to make a white roux and so what I want to do is just melt the butter and the flour
03:05 together and cook it until it feels just a little bit sandy. What that tells me is that the starch
03:12 granules have cooked just a little bit. The other way that you'll know that a roux is ready to
03:21 move forward is there's a very distinctive smell that comes out of the pot. It goes from smelling
03:27 like butter and flour to smelling a little bit like cooked popcorn and when you get that smell
03:32 you know that it's probably going to have that sandy feel. So I would say this roux is done. I'm
03:38 getting that popcorn smell right now. I have some hot milk and what I want to do is introduce a
03:44 little bit of the milk and stir it into the roux and what you will see happening, I'll hold it up
03:50 so you can see it happening, is it will thicken almost immediately and I'm going to leverage that
03:56 thickness to break up any lumps that might be in this pan. Okay when there's no lumps
04:04 then I go back to the heat and I add a second addition of liquid
04:08 and again it will thicken and I will take advantage of the thickness to break up any
04:16 additional lumps and if I keep doing this I'll reach a point where it is solid but soft, almost
04:26 to the point where it wants to become liquid at which point I add the rest of the liquid and
04:31 smooth it out. But if you can see here this is thick again and you do this two or three times,
04:38 four times and by the time all the milk is in you've got what the French would call a bechamel.
04:47 It's a sauce. Now we're going to take that bechamel and add grated montasio cheese to it.
04:52 So we're going to create a mornay sauce or a cheese sauce, fairly thick one and this thick
05:00 cheese sauce will be the basis of our souffle. What I would plan on doing is let this simmer for
05:11 15 or 20 minutes. At the end here what I'm going to do is season it with a little bit of cayenne.
05:18 Cayenne is a nice addition because black pepper would look like black specks in a white sauce.
05:24 So cayenne looks a lot more appealing. I'm going to also season this with some salt
05:32 and just a splash of lemon juice just to brighten it up.
05:39 And then the last addition, once this is cooked for the requisite amount of time for the 15 or 20
05:51 minutes, I'm going to take it and you can even do this off the heat. I'm going to take the montasio
05:56 cheese that's been grated and just add it right into this sauce and I should be able to stir that
06:05 and there should be enough residual heat so that the cheese will melt. I've got the soup made.
06:12 We made the base for the souffle. I've got some that I made here yesterday that's been refrigerated
06:18 that's ready to go. I've got egg whites, I've got little croutons that are designed to fit right
06:26 inside of a soup bowl and then I've got some more shaved montasio. I'm going to take a couple of egg
06:33 whites. I'm just making a small amount here and I'm going to begin to whip these
06:39 and it's the whipped egg whites that will lighten our souffle.
06:46 As I get to the end I want to lift it and bring more air in
06:51 and I would say these have quadrupled in volume now. They're still kind of shiny and moist and
07:02 let's see what happens when I lift the whisk. I lift it up and I get a peak but it topples over.
07:08 That's sort of a soft peak. That's what I want. So that's where I want it right now. I'm going to
07:15 take a portion of this cheese sauce, the souffle appare, and I'm going to take a third of these
07:25 egg whites and I'm going to add them and these this first edition of egg whites will sort of
07:36 deflate but it will make this mixture lighter and I'm cutting down through the middle and coming up
07:43 on the outside. That's folding and when it's just about homogenous then I'm going to take
07:54 the second edition and I'm going to be a little bit more gentle with that.
08:00 I want to maintain some of that frothy light texture and then the final third
08:12 I want to be very careful with so that
08:22 most of the air in this is preserved.
08:24 So this is a souffle. What we're going to do is ladle some soup into this soup crock.
08:40 I'm going to suggest we fill it about three quarters full. That's about
08:48 six ounces of soup, something like that. And then I'm going to take one of these croutons
08:55 and I'm going to float it right on the soup and as it floats there I'm going to put
09:01 just a slice or two of this montasio right on top.
09:10 Next I'm going to begin the process of spooning on this souffle mixture.
09:20 And it will probably double in size so don't go
09:36 too crazy. And then finally I'm going to lay a little bit more cheese right on the outside.
09:44 You'll recall from a previous video if you've watched it already that this cheese browns
09:50 beautifully and crisps up in the most delightful way so this topping will become kind of crisp and
09:55 brown and that's just what I want. The oven is preheated and in it goes at 375
10:05 degrees. So our soup's been in the oven now for about 12 minutes. Let's take a look
10:11 and see how it's coming along. You're looking for a couple of things and I think we've got it all.
10:18 You're looking for it to be nicely domed the way it is right now. You want the cheese that we put
10:23 on the outside to be melted and beginning to brown and nice and crisp. Make sure you don't
10:29 fill it any more than three quarters full otherwise you'll probably see some of the soup spilling out
10:34 over the outside. So three quarters full and then once it's done rush it to the table because this
10:41 souffle waits for no one. Onion soup with Montasio souffle. Give it a try.