Homemade French Onion Soup Mix

As anyone with MSG sensitivity knows, when you can't eat that stuff anymore you have to get creative to make full flavoured foods.  This can seem hard when you've been so used to using pack mixes to speed things up in the kitchen.  But once you know how to read labels, you know what the nasties are to look out for and also find the delicious things that give you back the flavour you've been missing.  Get back to basics and head to the spice aisle!

One of the things I really missed when my MSG sensitivity first began was potato bake.  Our friend Tracy makes to most delicious, mouth-watering potato bake for family barbeques.  It's creamy, it's cheesy, the potatoes are tender and melting... I'm salivating just thinking about it.  But sadly, the recipe she uses calls for French onion soup mix.  That's right!  That little sachet of powdered soup from the supermarket.  All of these innocent looking packets contain Flavour Enhancer 621, code name for MSG.  This may sometimes be switched around with Flavour Enhancer numbers 627, 631 or 635.  The other three are artificial versions of MSG, called Ribonucleatides, which can be even more menacing (Google the E635 and pick the Fed Up With Food Additives website for more info).  Anyway, I was missing things like this, so I went hunting for an alternative that was safe for me to eat.  This is a recipe I have found and used successfully in place of the commercially made French onion soup mix. I hope you find it useful too.

Homemade French Onion Soup Mix

Ingredients:

3/4 cup dried minced onion

2 Massel brand beef stock cubes (see notes)
4 teaspoons onion powder
1/4 teaspoon celery salt

1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon curry powder (or to taste)
1/8 teaspoon pepper


Method:

Put all ingredients into a resealable sandwich bag, adding the stock cubes last. Press out most of the air as you seal the bag, and then rub the ingredients together, being careful not to tear the bag in the process.  Do this until the stock cubes are broken down and evenly mixed into the dry ingredients.

Makes the equivalent of one packet of French onion soup mix. Store in an air tight container until needed.  Flavours will infuse and the mix will taste better after being stored for a couple of days.  

To make up as a soup, add to a 1L of water. Bring to the boil.  Serve with toast, with or without butter or melted cheese.  Enjoy!

French onion soup mix, with roasted onions from IKEA.

*Note* I use Massel brand stock cubes because they are the only ones I have found that don't list the above E numbers, MSG, anything hydrolysed or "natural flavours".  They do contain yeast extract though, which can form free MSG when combined with salt at high temperatures, so if you're super sensitive you may want to avoid these too.  For some reason I seem to be OK with them.  I'm yet to have a reaction.  Hopefully it stays this way... I'm can't imagine not having a stock of some sort in my pantry!

An alternative I found to using the dried onion flakes from the spice aisle is roasted onions from IKEA, RONSTAD LOK. They have a pungent onion aroma as well.  I used a mix of both onion flakes and the roasted onions in the mix pictured above.