♪♪
-A classic French onion soup
is based on fragrant caramelized onions
in a hearty, rich beef broth.
Individual portions of that soup
are then topped with a toasted a piece of bread,
known as a crouton,
and then a heavy fistful of melted Gruyère cheese.
It makes a showstopping first course for any meal.
In this bowl here
I have about 4 pounds of onions that have been sliced.
And I'm gonna finish slicing up the last of the onions here.
I just remove the root and the tip of the onion.
Typically cut the onion in half,
and this makes it much easier to peel.
And then just slice the onions.
You want to slice them pole to pole.
Doesn't matter if the onions are all completely even or not,
because they're gonna cook for so long,
they'll break down so much
that you won't be able to tell the difference in the end.
Add those to the rest of our onions.
Now, in this pot here, this large Dutch oven,
I have 4 tablespoons of unsalted melted butter
that's been melting away over medium-high heat.
And to that I'm going to add all 4 pounds
of our sliced onions.
And along with those sliced onions,
I'm gonna add 1 teaspoon of sugar
and 1 teaspoon of table salt.
So we're gonna mix this all together.
The sugar and salt are gonna do two things in here.
One, they're both gonna help pull moisture out of the onion.
That moisture also contains some sugars.
Those natural sugars will eventually caramelize.
And the added sugar also helps expedite
that caramelization process.
So just gives it a little bit of a boost.
And for this I used just basic yellow onions.
You could use white onions if you wanted to.
There's no reason to use sweet onions like Walla Walla
or Vidalia onions.
They're just gonna become too sweet at the end of cooking.
And these onions will cook down to be
completely sweet enough on their own.
Okay, now at this stage,
we're gonna put the lid on the pot
and we're gonna let the onions cook for about 20 minutes.
Now, the lid is gonna trap the steam in there,
and that steam is gonna create a hot cooking environment,
and it's gonna help the onions break down
and release their moisture.
♪♪
Okay, it's been 20 minutes,
so we can take a look at our onions.
You can see they've released a ton of moisture.
They're also very, very soft at this point.
And that's exactly what we're looking for.
So at this point, we're gonna continue to cook the onions
for about 5 to 10 minutes to drive off
all this excess liquid in the bottom of the pot
so we can actually begin the caramelization process.
It's been about 10 minutes, and you can see we've driven off
a fair amount of liquid from these onions
and a little bit of fond
which is the browning that happens from the caramelization
of the sugar that's started to form
on the bottom of the pot.
And that's great.
So we're gonna reduce the heat at this point to medium,
and we're gonna cook these onions slowly
and give them a stir every now and then
until they are really deep, golden brown
and they've really developed their sweetness.
Now, if those little bits of fond on the bottom of the pot
start to burn or get too dark,
you want to just be diligent about scraping them up.
And if you're unable to scrape them up with the spoon,
you could add a tablespoon or so of water
just to help lift them off the bottom of the pot.
♪♪
So it's been about 40 minutes,
and you can see that our caramelized onions have changed
quite a bit in their color, their look, and their texture.
They are fully caramelized at this point.
And you can also notice that there's a significant amount
of fond in the bottom of the pot.
Those bits of fond have a lot of flavor.
We're going to add a cup of red wine to deglaze
those bits of fond.
And once we pull them up, they're gonna incorporate
into the body of the soup.
So in with all these caramelized onions, which are pretty sweet,
we didn't want any more sweetness.
We found that a cup of dry red wine
added enough complexity to it.
Bring this to a simmer and cook this
until nearly all that wine has evaporated,
And we're gonna use our wooden spoon to just scrape up
those bits of fond on the bottom of the pot while we go.
Okay, you can see that the red wine
is nearly evaporated.
At this point, we're gonna add 8 cups of beef broth.
Since beef broth is a predominant flavor in this soup,
you want to make sure you get a good-quality beef broth.
So again, 8 cups of beef broth going into the soup.
And then on top of that
we're going to add 1/2 teaspoon of table salt,
1/2 teaspoon of pepper.
2 bay leaves, and 4 sprigs of fresh thyme.
So we'll just give that a little stir.
We'll increase the heat a little bit
and bring this to a boil.
Our soup has come to a boil now,
and we're gonna reduce the heat to medium low.
And we're gonna let it simmer gently for about 30 minutes,
during which time it's gonna reduce
and concentrate in flavor.
While that's going on, we can turn our attention
to the croutons.
Traditionally, when you get a crock
of French onion soup at a restaurant,
the croutons are in a disk
that cover the entire surface of the soup.
So I have 6 ounces of a baguette here,
and we're just gonna cut this into 1-inch pieces.
So if there was an aha moment for us
when we were developing this recipe,
it was to cut the croutons into bite-size pieces
so they would actually fit in your spoon
and fit in your mouth.
Just gonna split it into about four pieces lengthwise.
And cut each one of these in half
and crosswise into about 1-inch pieces.
Okay, so now we can add our croutons to our bowl.
And we're gonna toast these in the oven for a bit
until they're nice and crispy.
In order to help with the toasting,
we're gonna add 3 tablespoons
of extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon of salt,
and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.
We'll just stir them around to coat
all the croutons evenly with the oil and the salt and pepper.
We can just throw that onto a sheet pan
and spread them out into an even layer,
And we'll put these in a 350-degree oven
for about 15 minutes
till their nice and crisp and golden brown.
♪♪
The croutons are fully cooled.
You can see they're nice and crisp at this point.
That's perfect.
And our soup has also been simmering for a good half hour,
and it's reduced and concentrated in flavor
so we can go ahead and turn that off.
We're just gonna fish out the bay leaves and the thyme sprigs.
And at this point, this is our last opportunity
to season the soup before we put it into our crocks,
so we want to give it a taste
and see if the salt and pepper is correct.
That's pretty well seasoned.
I'll add a touch of salt, though.
And crank of black pepper.
And stir that in.
Okay, now at this point we're ready to go ahead
and portion our soup
into our traditional French onion soup crocks.
If you don't have these kind of crocks,
you could at this point
put cheese on top of the crouton piles,
put these back into the oven,
portion the soup into regular soup bowls,
and then use a spatula to scoop
all these croutons and cheese on top of those bowls.
But we're gonna stick with the traditional way today.
It's nice, to prevent drips, if you scrape it
on the bottom of the pot first
before you transfer it to your bowl.
And I'm putting all these crocks onto a baking sheet.
This is gonna make it easier for us
to transfer all the crocks into the oven at once
rather than fumbling around with individual crocks.
Okay, perfect.
Now we're ready for the best part of the recipe,
which is the cheese and the croutons.
So when you're eating this, it should feel slightly indulgent,
almost like there's too much cheese,
and that means you're doing it right.
So we're gonna start off with about 1 cup of Gruyère
we're gonna add and divide among these soup crocks.
So it's about a heaping 2 tablespoons per soup.
And this is slightly different than the traditional method
where you just put the croutons on top and then the cheese.
We wanted to get some of that cheese into the soup as well.
And now we're gonna add our croutons.
Scatter them on top of the soup.
We're gonna finish with our remaining cup of Gruyère cheese.
Again, about 2 1/2 tablespoons per soup crock,
Okay, and we're finally gonna top this off
with a little bit of shredded Parmesan.
We shredded this on the large holes of a box grater,
and we have about 1 1/2 ounces here.
Again, so it's about a heaping tablespoon or so per soup.
We've preheated the oven to 500 degrees,
and we're gonna throw these crocks into the oven
and let them cook until the soup is bubbling around the edges
and the cheese is melted and gooey and golden brown.
♪♪
Ooh, these look gorgeous.
Okay, so it's been about 7 minutes.
You can see the soup is bubbling around the edges,
the cheese is melted.
And it looks fantastic. Smells fantastic too.
So at this point, the soup is extremely hot.
You can tell that from all the bubbles.
We're gonna let it sit before we dig in,
just to give the cheese a little chance to set up.
Okay, our French onion soup has had a few minutes
to cool down, so we can transfer it to our plate.
A lot of times with recipes for French onion soup,
you'll see a lot of cheese
that's melted down the sides of the crock.
I think a lot of that is just for show
because it's completely unnecessary.
What we did is we put all the cheese in there
so we don't have a hard-to-clean crock on the outside,
and we're gonna actually eat all the cheese we bought.
Alright, it's time to dig in.
Mmm.
So good.
Although it didn't seem like
very much red wine in the beginning,
you can really taste what it's adding to the soup.
It's very complex for so few ingredients.
The cheese and the croutons
add a lot of textural appeal to the soup.
It's perfect for any special-occasion dinner.
cold day.
It comes together relatively easily
after you're done caramelizing those onions.
But the payoff for that little bit of work is just tremendous.
So for a great version of this classic soup,
start with a solid batch of caramelized onions.
Deglaze those onions with a little bit of red wine.
And, finally, cut the croutons into bite-sized pieces.
From "Cook's Country,"
a special-occasion-worthy French onion soup.