Brown Onion Soup

This is one of those simple soup recipes that you keep making over and over again. Whenever I serve this soup, everyone asks me for the recipe. It was given to me about 26 years ago by Judy, a friend of mine who now lives in Melbourne. Whenever we had dinner at her home, she would always try out a new recipe and they usually turned out great. This is one of my favourites that she made one cold winter night when we were over there. It is such a tasty soup I know that you will be making it often. I will be sharing some of her other recipes with you later on.

PREPARATION:

4 brown onions
2 - 3 large rashers of bacon
2 beef stock cubes
4 cups of water
salt and black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon butter
2 slices fresh bread with crusts removed

Roughly chop up the onions and bacon. In a stockpot, brown them in the butter over a medium heat. When onion is quite brown but still soft and bacon cooked, add the crumbled stock cubes and quickly add the water and black pepper. Turn the heat up until it boils and then reduce heat and cook for approx 20 minutes. Turn heat off and take pot off stove to slightly cool. Add the bread to soup and blend with either a hand held blender such as a Bamix or else pour soup in batches into a bench blender and blend until smooth. When finished blending, taste the soup and if needed add a little salt for prefered taste. I often find that it doesn't need any salt as it gets enough from the bacon and the stock cubes flavour. Serve this with some fresh crusty bread sticks, either cold or heated for several minutes in the oven.