French Onion Soup

March 2025

Recipe from Cook's Country, February 2020

I like having French Onion Soup in restaurants but I have little experience making it myself and I haven't tried it from a can. About ten years ago I made a version of this soup which came out well but I don't think I've made it since then. After seeing a newer recipe demonstrated on TV I was tempted into trying it again.

Four pounds of onion (four largish onions) were sliced thin and placed into a Dutch oven with melted butter, sugar, and salt then covered and cooked for about 20 minutes with occasional stirring. The cover was removed and cooking continued to evaporate most of the liquid that had been released from the onions and to start to caramelize them. With the liquid gone the cooking continued for an additional 30 minutes, with occasional stirring and scraping the bottom of the Dutch oven, until the onions were a uniform caramel color. A cup of red wine was stirred into the onions and cooked until almost entirely evaporated. Beef broth (we use Better Than Bouillon concentrate to make broth), fresh thyme sprigs, bay leaves, salt, and pepper were added and the mixture simmered for another 30 minutes. (During this time croutons were made from a store-bought baguette, olive oil, salt, and pepper.)  Because we don't have oven-safe soup bowls, two portions of the soup were transferred into a Corningware dish then sprinkled with grated Gruyère cheese, croutons, more Gruyère, and some grated parmigiano reggiano cheese. This was baked in a 500° oven to melt the cheese then transferred to soup bowls for serving. Total time 2 hours 40 minutes; while much of this time was hands off the soup required frequent visits to stir the onions and adjust the burner temperature. We should get about four dinners from this recipe.

We enjoyed this soup. It was not hard to make but because of the time taken to cook the onions it is a bit of a project. Because the final step of melting the cheese was not done in the serving bowls the croutons  were mixed in with the soup, becoming soggy, and the melted cheese was more dispersed through the soup than it would be otherwise, but these are minor complaints. Served with salad it makes a good cold-weather dinner.

Note: The notes in the recipe described a method for adding the cheese and croutons for bowls that are not oven safe. I tried this for some of the leftover soup and it worked well, better than toasting the croutons and cheese in a different bowl than used for eating. A mound of croutons is made on a baking sheet then covered with grated cheeses. This is placed under the broiler for 2-3 minutes then transferred with a spatula to a bowl of hot soup.