French Onion Soup

Since the "chilly" weather has returned I am back to craving soup. Looking around the kitchen I realized that I had everything I needed for French Onion Soup! I adore French Onion soup but haven't ever made it at home before. I made it in culinary school, I've made it at work, I know my mother has made it... but I don't have a "go to" recipe for it. I consulted a few different cookbooks and pulled parts of two different recipes to create my own.

The first thing that you need to go is gather all the ingredients, as you can see this is basically a pile of onions and some beef broth (or chicken broth if you prefer it.)


A quick word about the butter... Normally I would just use "normal" butter, but I was out. Thankfully I had a slab of Plugra in the fridge. I tend to reserve this product for baking, finishing sauces, and buttering croissants... applications where you can really get the benefit of the full flavor and richness that it brings to food.

It has been said many times that French onion soup is all about the onions! This is a rather true statement. I've covered one base by using a variety of different kinds because they all lend different elements to the dish. In this collection we have red, yellow and sweet onions. I also used shallots and a head of garlic (it is hiding behind the cheese.) The other thing that matters with the onions is how you cut them!


All the onions start out in a variety of sized and shapes. For the soup you want them to all go into the pot in about the same size and shape so that they will cook at the same rate. There are a two ways to accomplish this. First, if you have a mandoline this would be a great task to use it for. Second, pull out the trusty chef's knife and get to work. I opted for the knife since I love the one I got for Christmas and am still at the point where I think up random reasons to use it.

Either way you will end up with a pot of onions that looks something like this.


You want your slices to be thin, but not so thin that they will totally break down to nothing in the cooking process. And speaking of the cooking process... once the pot is on the stove over a low/ medium-low heat basically ignore it for the next 30-50 minutes. I checked on the pot a few times to stir things around and see how the color was coming.

You want the onions to go from the above photo to something like this. At this point the onions have spent lots of time in the pot with just a little butter and a splash of olive oil.


Hiding under the mess of onions is a layer of deep brown bits of onion that have secured themselves to the bottom of the pot. These bits are full of flavor and need to be removed from the bottom and worked in before the been broth is added.


The best thing for deglazing a pot is liquid... especially alcohol! In one of the books it mentioned using balsamic vinegar and port. I have the vinegar, but I was missing port. Looking at my alcohol collection I noticed a bottle of Courvoisier, I've never known it to screw up a recipe so I used it.


Once the courvoisier and balsamic have been added, the bottom of the pot has been scraped, and every thing has been mixed together it is time to add all the broth. I like to add warm broth, so way back when I started the onions I also put a large pot on the back burner and filled it with the broth and put it on a very low heat so that it would be ready when I was.

So... add the warm broth to the onions, stir to mix it all together, crank the heat up to a boil and once it boils reduce the head to a simmer and leave it alone for another 30 minutes or so.

When it is all done you will end up with something resembling this pot.


Shortly before the soup is ready you want to slice some bread (mmm baguette) and grate some cheese (gruyere.) I was feeling rather decadent so I took the bread, melted a little more butter, buttered the bread and popped it into the toaster for a few minutes to create giant buttery croutons.

To really have the whole "french onion soup experience" it is necessary to ladle some soup into an oven safe bowl, add the croutons or sliced bread, top with the cheese, and as a last step slide the whole thing under a wicked hot broiler to melt the cheese! You end up with delicious melty cheese & soup soaked croutons covering a delicious rich soup.


Cheers!