Weekly Recipes - 4 of 5: French Onion Soup🇫🇷

Today ushers in part 4 of my recipe series. If you’ve been tuning in these last few weeks, I’ve been cooking dishes from around the world for my first time. This week I honed in on the savory, sweet, and decadent soup hailing from France known locally as Soupe à L’oignon Gratinée or more commonly known in the States as French Onion Soup.

I’ve been itching to try this soup, and if my memory serves me correctly, I’ve never had it. My taste buds have been in desperate need of savoring this comforting, cheesy bowl of goodness. That is the reason why I’m cooking this dish during peak Summer — right as a heat wave is passing through much of the United States. Under normal circumstances, this dish would be reserved solely for the Fall / Winter.

The final result was absolutely delicious. It’s amazing just how much you can get out of the humble ingredient known as the onion or should I say, oignon. Caramelizing onions completely changes their flavor profile and transforms them from a pungent state to a soft and sweet one. My only gripe with this dish, which is glaringly obvious, is that it’s not a full meal. It’s a fantastic starting course but if you’re anything like me, you likely won’t be satiated with just this soup. So plan accordingly if you decide to spend the multiple hours cooking this soup because you may want a separate side, or even meal, to accompany it.

There were various recipes I found, but this was the primary one I followed.

Ingredients

See image below. If you’ve seen the past blogs, then excuse me sounding like a broken recording, but I eyeballed everything. No strict measurements.

• Onions — Yellow / sweet onions are preferred. I had left over halves of red and white onions, so I tossed those in as well. The more the merrier. All in 5 onions were used: 4 yellow onions, half of a red onion, and half of a white onion

• Beef Stock — As with any dish, homemade stock is preferred. However, if you don’t have the time for all that and don’t want the watered down stock from the store, then find some bone broth. It’s much more flavorful and rich

• Gruyere Cheese

• Baguette — You’re essentially making large croutons that top the soup. So if you have a few days old bread, that is fine (probably preferred). You don’t need a fresh baguette

• Red Wine Vinegar — Some acidity to cut the richness of the soup

• Wine — Many recipes recommended this for the acidity and layering of flavor, but I did not include it for reasons I’ve shared below. Across the recipes I found, the type of alcohol recommended, or lack thereof, varied greatly

• Flour — Optional. This is to thicken the soup

• Butter

• Thyme — Can be either fresh or dry

• Bay Leaves

• Salt & Pepper

• Olive Oil

The Cooking Process

This is a simple cook. The key is to fully caramelize the onions, which takes time and constant tending to.

• 10-20 mins: Cutting up all the onions into thin or medium-sized slices. The time taken for this step greatly varies based on your knife skills.

• 10 mins: Letting the pot heat up and then adding olive oil and butter and allowing that base of fat heat up.

• 90 mins: Cooking down the onions. Regardless of how many onions you use, expect at least 60 mins if you want your onion to actually caramelize. Makes sure they are shrunk down, soft, and most of all, brown!

• 20 mins: Adding the red wine vinegar, flour (optional), and spices and stirring them all in. Then adding the beef stock and letting the soup come to a simmer.

• 20 mins: Prepping the toppings, which are my favorite parts of the soup. They make the soup more well rounded. Shredding the gruyere cheese. Making the croutons by slicing the bread, pouring olive oil on the pieces, and baking them in the oven.

• 10 mins: Pouring the soup into oven-safe bowls and topping them with the croutons and cheese. Broiling the bowls in the oven for ~5 mins until the cheese fully melts and has brown spots.

Lessons Learned

There are a few items to call out that will help you get the most out of this dish. One of them is a true lessons learned, which I’ll start with, and the rest are tips.

Research which stores carry the type of acids (e.g., alcohol, vinegar) you prefer incorporating. The addition of acids seemed like a critical element because chefs mentioned this would take the soup from good to great due to the layering of flavor and the balance the acidity brings. Across the 4 recipes I reviewed, one suggested dry white wine and dry sherry, another suggested dry sherry and cider vinegar, this one suggested brandy, and the main one I used suggested madeira and sherry vinegar. All that to say, there were no shortage of options, and I was scratching my head as I tried to figure out which one to choose. If you are well-versed in acids, then it’ll likely be easier for you to decipher the mixed suggestions and understand what flavor(s) each option brings and which flavor profile you are ultimately going for. However, I did not possess that knowledge. So I went to the grocery store with a wide list of options, didn’t find any of them, went into a slight panic, and left the store with nothing. I had to remind myself that I was not being critiqued on this dish or even serving it to anyone outside of my fiancée. So the world wouldn’t end and the dish would be just fine without a wine or specific vinegar. I called an audible and decided to simply use the red whine vinegar in my fridge. However, the key lesson here is to know which option(s) you prefer and verify if your grocer or container store carries the item. One other suggestion I read online was to only use a wine that you would actually drink, albeit a cheaper one is fine. The world of anonymous Reddit users suggested not using the cooking wines offered at the grocery store that are exclusive to cooking (i.e., you wouldn’t drink a glass of it).

I suggest checking your kitchen for oven-safe bowls. A stoneware or porcelain bowl is preferred. While those bowl types add to the aesthetic, the real reason for them is due to their functionality. You need the bowl to be an appropriate serving size for a single person, and most of all, you need it to be oven-safe to withstand the high heat from the broil. The broil allows the cheese to fully melt and then brown to a certain extent (i.e., like a pizza). The achieve that level of melt, your bowl needs to endure the intensity of an oven broil. Unfortunately for me, my bowls were too large and also, I was unsure if they were completely oven-safe, so I removed them from the broil prematurely.

If you’re privileged enough to have a range hood, or you just have a standard over-the-range microwave fan, make sure it’s running at full blast. Onions have an extremely high water content so lots of steam gets released as the onions cook down. Unless you don’t mind your whole place smelling like onions and having all that steamy humidity building onto your kitchen surfaces, then I’d suggest running your fan the whole time. On the note of high water content, be prepared for your onions to cook down to roughly one tenth of their original size. My dutch oven was originally filled to the brim with onions, and I still had leftover pieces from the prep that I could not fit in the oven. However, by the end of the cook, the onion-like jam was a fraction of its original volume.

Make sure you constantly stir the onions so the ones at the bottom of the pot don’t burn. Some browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pot are fine because that adds flavor (i.e., Maillard reaction). However, don’t let the onions sit for too long to the point that the entire base of the pot blackens. See image below… Whoops, I may have gotten distracted watching Love Island… Anyways, if that happens to you, don’t lose hope and feel like your efforts went down the drain. The burnt base will absolutely ruin the flavor of your soup, but you can simply transfer the cooked down onions to a different pot. This may seem obvious, but when you’re scooping up the onions to transfer them over, make sure you don’t scrape the burn bits at the bottom.

Lastly, in my opinion, the soup is best made with an equal ratio of onion to liquid. It shouldn’t be a majority onion because then it’s less a soup and more a bowl of caramelized onions in a bit of broth. It also shouldn’t be a majority liquid because then it’s less an onion soup and more a beefy broth with a pinch of onions. Strike a balance somewhere in the middle.

The start of many good dishes: the fat(s) heated to a medium-high temp. In this case, both olive oil and butter were used.

The onions after ~10 mins of cooking down. I forgot to take a picture at the very beginning but originally there was not enough room in the giant pot — for reference, this is a 5.5 quart dutch oven — for all the uncooked onions.

The onion volume significantly decreased. Still more cooking necessary to achieve the proper caramelization.

Ooops, I got distracted by Love Island and let the onions burn. The final level I cooked the onion down to is shown in the smaller pot.

Red wine vinegar, flour, spices, and broth all added in.

The croutons!

The lighting was way off, the bowl was not fit for its purpose, the cheese needed to brown, and the presentation was subpar. But the taste was delicious! And that’s all that matters.