French Onion Soup Sandwiches

Summer is coming!  Summer is coming!  Summer is coming!

Hurry we need to make goals!

Get out your pens, guys!  Ready?  Okay.

This Summer I Will:

Swim in the ocean.  Even if it is the freezing mother effing cold Oregon ocean!

Get a sunburn.  Er, tan.  Suntan.

Wear orange with everything.

Eat grilled and/or barbecued meat at every single opportunity.

Wear socks with high heels.

Sleep outside at least once.  I literally had a dream the other night that I was staring up into the night sky and could see whirling planets and shifting galaxies.  That!

Make and eat ice cream.

Paint my ugly, chipped, dull green kitchen table.  You know the one.  It's the background I'm trying desperately to hide in every photo.

Sometimes you get ril tired.

Paint my ugly, chipped nails hot pink, and keep them reasonably so.

Buy fake snakes to scare the birds?  rats?  children?  strawberry thieves! out of my garden.  If that doesn't work?  Real snakes.

What are your summer plans?  Do they involve hiking, biking, or triking?  Flying to new and exotic locales?  Pinning dead bugs onto cardboard?  It's cool, we all have our hobbies.  Weirdo.

French Onion Soup Sandwiches (adapted from Joy the Baker)

This is the kind of recipe that I got into cooking for.  Easy, fancy, and so lip-smackingly satisfying.  My version here is on gluten-free bread that didn't really lend itself to grilling, but Joy recommends, after caramelizing the onions, assembling the sammich and doing it up like a grilled cheese.  I kept that in the recipe, because, trust Joy. 

Also, very good served with artichokes!  These are part of Project Side Dish, because I'm finally learning that just putting a bag salad and a bottle of Ranch on the table at every meal is not really working, as far as getting my family to eat fruits and/or veggies.  More creativity to come.

4 medium yellow onions, peeled cut in half and sliced into 1/4-inch thick semi-circles
6 tablespoons unsalted butter,softened, plus more for buttering the bread
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons coarse sea salt
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper
2 pinches of granulated sugar
6 tablespoons beef broth, beer, or white wine to deglaze the pan (I used white wine, zero complaints)
1 cup finely shredded cheese (Joy recommends Gruyere, I'm a cheapskate so I used Monterey Jack.  Zero complaints), please use more cheese to your own taste
8 slices bread, GF or otherwise

Place a medium, heavy bottom sauce pan over medium heat.  Add the butter and olive oil and stir until butter is melted.  Add the sliced onions all at once.  Stir to coat the onions in the fat.  Allow onions to cook, undisturbed, for about 4 minutes.  Add salt, thyme, and pepper and stir.  Place lid on the pan and allow to onions to cook for about 4 minutes at a time.  Lower the heat if the onions are browning too quickly.  Remove the lid to stir the onions every so often.  The onions will begin to brown, break down, and resemble an onion jam.

When onions are entirely browned and completely soft, add your liquid (beef broth, beer, wine, or water) to the pan.  Using a wooden spoon, scrape any burned bits off the bottom of the pan as the liquid evaporates.  This takes about 30 seconds.  Remove pan from heat and allow to rest while you assemble the sandwiches.

Butter one side of each slice of bread.  On the unbuttered side add a good sprinkling of gruyere, top with warm onion mixture, top with more cheese and the final piece of sandwich bread.  Repeat process in assembling the other sandwich.

Cook sandwiches over medium heat in a medium saute pan.  Flip and cook until golden on the outside and melty on the inside.  Serve immediately.