French Funyun soup

there's nothing better on a hot summer day than baked soup

Hello, clowns!

Man, it’s been hot in Chicago for the past week, so I have not been going outside much. Whenever I do leave the house for a bit, all my body parts stick together, which is a beautiful experience for everyone involved.

When it’s hot out, I reminisce about when my dad used to drive a Nissan Sentra, which had vinyl seats. During summer, the vinyl practically gave us second degree burns. It was awesome. Then when you got out of the car, it felt like you were removing Scotch tape from the back of your legs, complete with that sound and everything. You had to look at your legs to make sure you didn’t actually leave a layer of skin behind.

This week’s edition of the newsletter was Davida’s idea. Sometimes there’s pretty good origin stories to newsletter editions, but in this case, Davida just said one day, “What about French Funyun soup?” with a cheeky grin on her face.

If Food is Stupid was a TV show, I’d whip my face around to the camera at this point and make a weird expression while an annoying sound effect plays.

What’s better on a scorcher than a big bowl of hot baked soup with cheese on it, anyway?

Aside from having to cook down a shitload of onions, French onion soup is pretty straightforward.

It’s pretty much beef stock cooked with slow-cooked onions, bread, and cheese. Good thing the Funyuns were doing the heavy lifting for me today.

[The workers over at Frito-Lay do a good job of making it happen. Hopefully their days will get better soon, because it sounds like the factory folk have been through absolute hell.]

One of the most important things in French onion soup is that rich deep onion flavor, which you coax out of the onions by browning them in your pan first.

So I drizzled a little olive oil on top of them and started them on low heat, crushing them up as I went along. If anything, I could give them a slight toastiness.

It did not take long for the apartment to start smelling weirdly good.

Now, it did not smell like onions, mind you. It was the scent of fried snacks being fried again in a pan, maybe with a hint of onion powder. Maybe refried Funyuns are in my future. Mmm. Mush.

It did not take long before little black bits started to form on the bottom of the pan.

When I say little black bits, I don’t mean these were caramelized bits of Funyuns, I mean to say that they were burned ones. This is what the French refer to as merde.

I got this weird can of wine at the grocery store to add to the French Funyun soup.

Davida said, “Don’t forget to shake the can after you open it.” I gave her a long look. She’s always joshin’ around. The fun never stops in this house!!!

I deglazed the bottom of the Funyun pan, and it hissed angrily at me.

It seems like the pan was also joshin’ around. The fun never stops in this house!!!

Some of the Funyuns took on the color of red wine, which was pretty cool.

Once the liquid had disappeared, either into the snacks or into thin air, I put some cheap boxed beef broth in and let the mixture simmer for a while.

The final result was this hot steaming pan of diarrhea.

I put some in a ramekin, and did this process over again, this time, with Flamin’ Hot Funyuns, because like I mentioned, the fun never stops in this house!!!

This is after I sautéed them a bit, added the red wine, and poured in the beef broth.

The photo isn’t really doing the contents of this pot any justice. The red color was so vivid I think it burned a hole through my eyeballs. It probably should have burned a hole through the pot, too.

The piping hot ramekin full of diarrhea is on the left, and the piping hot ramekin full of Satan’s chunky blood is on the right.

You have eyes. You probably figured that out.

Of course, no French onion soup is complete without a piece of crunchy toast on top, along with a layer of Gruyère or Swiss, but since I had plenty of Funyuns to go around, I put some on top of each ramekin.

If you are an award-winning food writer like me, this is where you have to describe this technique using the words, “interplay of texture.” Then everybody will nod solemnly at you, clap you on the back, and hand you award after award.

Oh good, I’d cover that terrible shade of red with cheese.

I let these guys ride in the oven, while I shuffled around the kitchen, farting to myself.

After the Swiss had melted and I brought the soup out of the oven, I said, “It smells kind of like feet in here.”

Then I heard Davida say, “French bunion soup!”

Gotta say, that was a pretty good one.

The cheese, hilariously, didn’t create a shell on top of the soup, but rather sank right into the depths of each ramekin. I guess Funyuns don’t give Swiss cheese a lot of emotional support during its time of need, and it shows. You gotta be able to know your real friends from the fake ones sometimes, right?

I shouldn’t be surprised, but the French Funyun soup was really good.

Sure, it had the texture of a soft pre-digested meal, but you know, French onion soup isn’t entirely known for its chewy onions. What really sang was the MSG in the seasoning, and because of that, the whole thing had a satisfying meatiness to it that I loved. Who knew sippable Funyuns could be so good?

My God, this color still hurts my eyes, even just looking at it through the screen of my laptop.

The Flamin’ Hot version had a slight acid note to it, which was really good, but I still think the original version was the real winner. I can’t say that at this point it tasted like Flamin’ Hot anything, to be honest, but it was definitely a pretty good spoonful of soup, despite looking like it came straight from Hell’s asshole. If anything, it sort of tasted like instant ramen broth.

Davida said, “I think this is the best thing you’ve made for the newsletter, this year, at least. I wish you’d made this for dinner tonight.”

I think it really says something when I’m disappointed that my cooking wasn’t actually disgusting. It’s because THE FUN NEVER STO—

---

Hey! You’ve read the newsletter all the way down to here, which means it’s time to share it on social media. If you’re not a paid subscriber yet, this is the second best thing you can do to support Food is Stupid.

I still can’t get over what a dumb name for a newsletter that is. Listen, I didn’t think anyone was going to read this thing.

And of course, don’t forget to become a paid subscriber. You get extra content nearly every week, and you can see all the old locked stuff at foodisstupid.substack.com, which means some of you have a lot of catching up to do. I’m excited for you!

That’s less than a buck per newsletter. Sounds like a pretty sick deal to me.

And if you’re here because of a photo of a particular sandwich I posted in a Facebook group, reply to this email with the name of the group, and I’ll tell you how that all turned out.

On that note, I love you guys, and I’ll pop into your inboxes next week.