French Onion Soup Dumplings
There’s a restaurant on the Lower East Side called Stanton Social, which is designed around a menu containing nothing but small tasting dishes meant to be shared with everyone at your table. Dave and I went there not too long ago at my honorary aunt’s recommendation, and everything we tried was excellent.
I fell utterly in love with their french onion soup dumplings. Dave abhors cheese, but even he enjoyed them once I dissected the cheese off of one for him to try. I went home and immediately started to work on replicating that dish.
French Onion Soup Dumplings
6 large (and I do mean large) red onions, peeled, quartered, and sliced into thin strips
Olive oil
1/4 tsp sugar
2 cloves roasted garlic, minced (or squished)
8 C beef stock
3/4 C dry white wine (I have used red wine instead, for a slightly different but equally delicious variation)
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp dry thyme
Salt and pepper
Gyoza wrappers
Croutons
Grated Swiss Gruyere cheese
Optional
Bamboo toothpicks
Escargot dishes
The essence of a good french onion soup is the stock. Don’t settle for canned stock; make it yourself. I based my stock recipe on this veal stock recipe by The Domestic Goddess. My changes simply involve using beef shank bones or oxtail instead of veal bones, serrano pepper instead of red hot pepper, and closer to 8 or 10 black peppercorns.
So, once you’ve made or defrosted your beef stock, it’s time to get going.
In a large soup pot, caramelize the onions in olive oil at medium high heat. Add the sugar once they’ve started to go transparent to help with the process. It takes a long time to properly caramelize onions, at least half an hour or so until they’re thoroughly browned but not burned. Once they reach that point, add the garlic and saute briefly before adding the stock, wine, bay leaf, and thyme. Lower the heat, cover partially, and simmer until the flavors are thoroughly blended, at least another half hour or so. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Drain the onions from the soup, reserving the broth. Put a small amount of broth in a small bowl convenient to your working area. Fill your gyoza wrappers one at a time. (You can substitute wonton wrappers, but the square (rather than round) shape wasn’t amenable to my goal state.) Place 1/2 tsp or so of mostly onions and however much broth clings to them in the center of each. Run a wet finger along the edges of each gyoza wrapper, then gather them together to form a small ball with the edges scrunched together in the top center. Set each aside and continue to fill and close the rest in the same manner.
Version 2.0: As Rose suggests, it actually works even better to freeze the soup into a slush, then fill the dumplings with the thick slush. This lets you get more broth into the dumplings. Alternatively, make a very gelled stock (use lots of chicken feet!), and let the soup cool and gel, then cut the gelled soup into cubes.
Version 3.0: If your stock does not gel solid in the fridge, add in gelatin and follow the instructions on the box as though you were making jello. Then you can very easily fill the dumpling wrappers with spoonfuls or cubes of gelled stock, which will melt back into liquid when hot. This is absolutely the right way to do this - ignore all previous versions of my recipe!
Place the dumplings in a steamer and steam over gently boiling water for about 15 minutes or until done. Place each dumpling in one of the depressions of the escargot dish, and sprinkle the top with a nice, thick layer of gruyere. Place the dish under the broiler until the cheese is melted and bubbly, which should take only a few minutes.
I made my croutons by cutting a slightly stale end of baguette into small cubes, then toasting them under the broiler, flipping them in order to brown all sides.
Version 2.0: I fry my croutons in a pan instead of broiling them nowadays, because I find it lets me get them more evenly browned. I fry them in a bit of olive oil or butter, and sprinkle on black pepper, salt, and the tiniest bit of truffle salt.
Skewer one crouton on each toothpick and then skewer each dumpling with a toothpick so prepared.
Serve the leftover broth with extra cheese to your younger brother, who loves french onion soup broth but always ends up throwing away most of the onions, or put it in your fridge to use as a base for stew later.
Eat while the cheese is still molten. Be careful, the dumplings are quite hot.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:29 am
My mother suggests making soup dumplings by freezing the broth
into a sort of slush or broth sorbet, which can then be
spooned into the wrappers. When the dumplings are boiled, the
slush melts, and you get dumplings full of soup.
March 23rd, 2006 at 6:43 am
Rose - that’s a good idea. With these, though, so much broth clings to the onions that it wasn’t at all a problem. Also, unlike the Chinese soup dumplings, the french onion soup dumplings at Stanton Social didn’t have large amounts of broth that spilled out all over the plate.
March 23rd, 2006 at 7:05 am
Wow, that looks brilliant. I gotta try this!
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:29 am
That looks gorgeous! Might have to try to find that restaurant, too…
March 24th, 2006 at 12:56 am
Oh my, that looks so damn good. I could eat French onion soup morning, noon, and nigh, and that’s an incredible way to prepare it.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:47 am
MM - Do!
BNA - Are you a local? It’s on the LES, on Stanton St.
rob - Mmmm, happy thoughts of unending onion cheese breath.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Wonderful roundup, Danielle.
And awesome photo … good luck with the move! I hope we see lots of pictures of the new kitchen.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Oops … sorry Danielle. I entered my comment for your roundups post here …
Here’s my comment for this post:
What presentation! Whatever the original looks like, you’ve done a spectacular job. Thanks for recreating and sharing the recipe!
May 11th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
Thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!!
After trying this dish at Stanton Social, I became OBSESSED with finding a recipe so that I could re-create it at home. So many sleepless nights, trying to figure out the chemistry and physics of how these things stay together…
You saved the day! Can’t wait to give it a try.
May 14th, 2006 at 6:30 am
soupy_loo - How wonderful! Let me know how it goes.
June 9th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
I was visiting NYC this week from San Francisco and had the dumplings at The Stanton Social. They were fantastic. Our party decided to order a second serving. I was planning to try and recreate these at home so thanks for posting this!
July 21st, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Awesome recipe.
Where did you geth those beautiful toothpicks from?
July 22nd, 2006 at 9:19 am
SF Guy - I hope it worked out!
shruti - I picked them up at A Cook’s Companion, on Atlantic Avenue just off of Court Street, in Brooklyn, NY.
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:22 pm
At the same restuarant they serve a dish of Wok Charred Edamame with spicy miso and ginger. Like the dumplings, I have thought about this dish since I left the table 4 months ago. Any ideas on a receipe for them?
August 24th, 2006 at 11:36 am
CCleigh - I didn’t try that dish when I was there, so I don’t know what it’s like, which would make it pretty tough to recreate. I’ll have to try it next time I’m there, though! If I do and I like it and I manage to recreate it (that’s a lot of ifs), I’ll drop you a line and let you know.
October 25th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
[…] […]
November 15th, 2006 at 1:22 am
[…] Danielle made festive French onion soup dumplings. She made onion soup from scratch, carefully filled dumpling skins with them, steamed them, then broiled them with cheese and croutons. […]
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February 17th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
this is fantastic, thank you. Now can you tackle the Wok-charred edamame please??? they are amazing.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Thanks for the recipe. I ate these at Stanton Social last night and had to search for a way to make them. I was thinking about adding gelatin to the soup overnight to form a solid (which is how the dim sum soup dumplings are made.) I don’t have an escargot dish, so will have to improvise there. I’ll let you know how they turn out!