the glorious onion

I made a batch of beef stock the other day, and didn't want to freeze it all.  That's the perfect excuse for a nice pot of French onion soup.  A properly made pot of onion soup is not a difficult thing, but it does take some time -- most of it hands off, but time nevertheless.  I started with the onions I had on hand; three sweet onions, a couple of purple cippolinis, and three shallots.  A proper onion soup takes a lot of onions, because they reduce in volume at an amazing rate as they caramelize.  A mix of onions is not necessary, but I would avoid using all super sweets, like vidalias or sweet 100s, because their sugar will concentrate to the point of making the soup taste too sweet.

a mix of onions, sliced

The onion slicing goes very quickly, because it doesn't really matter if they are different sized slices.  Caramelization will reduce them all to silky threads of onion.  I start with a dutch oven on top of the stove, sweating the onions down a bit while the oven heats to 325.

15 minutes over medium heat will reduce 

the onions by half

Once the onions have lost some of their moisture, I slide them, uncovered, into the low oven, to continue to caramelize.  While this method takes more time than caramelizing on top of the stove, it requires much less work.  Since my beef stock contains no salt, at this point I added in a couple of teaspoons of salt.  It took almost two hours for the onions to caramelize fully, but all that was required of me was a couple of minutes to stir the pot every 45 minutes or so.

the fully caramelized onions look a mess,

but all of that brown around the edges

will add tons of flavor to the stock

I stirred in a heaping tablespoon of flour, cooked that for a few minutes, then used a bit of sherry and spot of cognac to deglaze the pan on top of the stove, poured in the beef broth, along with a couple of bay leaves and a sprig of thyme, and slid the now covered pot back in the oven to simmer for another couple of hours.  Again, hands-off time.

deglazed pot, ready to head back to the oven

Towards the end of the oven simmer, I grated some gruyere cheese, and toasted a couple of slices of hearty french bread.  You don't want a soft bread, that will turn to mush in the soup.  The traditional soup starts with the bread in the bottom of the bowl, then soup, then cheese, but I like the slightly more textural crunch from floating the bread on the soup, and then topping it with the cheese.

toasted bread and grated cheese for the soup topping

There are schools of thought on this classic soup that the cheese must be sliced, and then draped over the edges of the bowl, to create a seal on the bowl of hot soup, but I prefer the pockets of air from grated cheese, that allows little spots on the toast to continue to toast under the broiler.   Ten minutes about 6 inches from a high broiler creates a crispy, creamy topping for the complex soup below.

 

crispy, creamy toast, with nicely browned cheese

and succulent stock with onions underneath

add a salad on the side, and it's a meal

While there are faster methods for making this soup, they require much more hands-on attention than the oven method.  Either way, it takes some time and care, which is probably why it is usually relegated to restaurant fare by most people.  But, one thing is true -- there is a lot of really bad restaurant French onion soup lurking around out there in restaurant land, and making it at home is one way to assure that this treat is really a treat.