French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup Recipe

Ingredients

• 6 large red or yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced.
• Olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon of sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 cups of beef stock, chicken stock, or a combination of the two (traditionally the soup is made with beef stock)
• 1/2 cup of dry vermouth or dry white wine
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 teaspoon of dry thyme
• Salt and pepper
• 8 slices of toasted French bread
• 1 1/2 cups of grated Swiss Gruyere with a little grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

1 In a large saucepan, sauté the onions in the olive oil on medium high heat until well browned, but not burned, about 30-40 minutes (or longer). Add the sugar about 10 minutes into the process to help with the carmelization.

2 Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add the stock, vermouth or wine, bay leaf, and thyme. Cover partially and simmer until the flavors are well blended, about 30 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Discard the bay leaf.

3 To serve you can either use individual oven-proof soup bowls or one large casserole dish. Ladle the soup into the bowls or casserole dish. Cover with the toast and sprinkle with cheese. Put into the broiler for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F, or until the cheese bubbles and is slightly browned. Serve immediately.

Serves 4-6.

Last night Michael and I made French Onion soup for the first time. I wanted to make something new (and something I’d been craving) for my official birthday dinner.

Since I had the day off, I picked up all the ingredients and started prepping everything before Michael got home from work. I started with making us salads.

Michael arrived home and I promptly gave him a glass of wine the moment he walked in the door. Everyone needs a little pampering once in awhile. Speaking of pampering, Michael brought me roses!

We don’t really have any house plants or flowers in the house because Fat Kitty will eat them. And then barf. So it’s a nice treat to get roses!

I opened some birthday cards and then got back to the business of cooking!

The soup was pretty easy to make, it was just really time consuming. Michael chopped the onions and satueed them until they were brownish.

Then we added a little bit of sugar to the onions to caramelize them.

I got the beef broth started in a pot on the stove. Michael added the wine to the onions, plus the garlic. Then he poured it all into the pot of beef broth. He added the herbs:

Everything had to sit for about 30 minutes. While it was sitting we ate our salads.

Since I didn’t have bowls that we could safely put in the oven we had to improvise for the bread/cheese topping.  I put the cut pieces of French Bread in a baking dish and then topped the pieces with slices of Swiss cheese.

Then we topped the Swiss cheese with shredded Parmesan and baked it.

The soup was ready. We topped the soup with the baked bread and added one more slice of Swiss Cheese to the soup.

The cheese melted in the soup. It was delicious! I loved the soup. We halved the recipe and I think the ratio of broth to onion was a little off. Next time I’d had maybe half a cup more of broth to the mixture.

I think the soup will be even better as leftovers the next day. The flavors were really rich and sweet. This recipe was a winner!

QUESTION: Have you ever made French Onion Soup before? How did it turn out?