My husband LOVES French Onion Soup. Any time we go to a restaurant for dinner and he sees French Onion Soup on the menu he gets all excited… it is similar to how he reacts when he sees Corned Beef and Hash on a breakfast menu. Well, for his homecoming/Friday night Gaming Geekfest he decided to serve a fancy meal! I quickly got the idea to make my own French Onion Soup as an “appetizer”. He loved the idea…so here we go!
I have to be honest, I have made this type of soup before but it didn’t turn out that awesome the last few times, but Eric’s love for it drives me to continue testing out recipes and perfecting the method. This time I chose to stick with two similar recipe’s and actually taste the soup while cooking it. (something you have probably already read I dont usually do)
French Onion Soup
3-6 Large Yellow/Sweet Onions (I only used 3.5 because they were GIANT)
1 box/lg can beef broth
1 box/lg can chicken broth
1/2-1C dry white wine or sherry
3-4 sprigs of fresh Thyme
a couple shakes of Garlic Powder
Salt
Pepper
Dash of Sugar
about 3 tsp Flour
French Bread
Swiss/Grueyer Cheese
*small individual corning ware dishes*
So obviously start out with the onions. Slicing these perticular onions was rough…really rough. They were like onions of the gods they were so strong and juicy! Slice them up and throw them in a frying pan with a little butter or olive oil. Add the sprigs of Thyme (I pulled the little leaves off rather than throwing the entire sprig in because I didn’t want to have to pick it out later) Once they start to heat up and sizzle throw in a dash of salt and some sugar(to help them brown and caramelize) Once they are a nice golden color toss in the flour and add the wine. (Because my frying pan is not big enough I went ahead and just transferred the cooked onions into a large pot then added the wine) Turn heat up to Hi and bring to a boil while slowly adding the Beef and Chicken stock. While you stir the liquid toss in a dash or two of the garlic powder and black pepper. At this point I had to taste the soup a couple times to determine if I needed to add some water if it was too strong, a little more wine if it wasn’t strong enough….Once the desired taste is achieved I set the burner to LOW and covered the pot letting it simmer for about 2 hours. The wine flavor that was almost overbearingly strong to begin with thankfully cooked through and at the end of the two hours had retreated to a wonderful aftertaste.
While the soup simmered I sliced the swiss cheese and the french bread. I toasted the bread slices in the oven, although I find this rather strange considering I am about to just toss them in a bowl of hot liquid and they are just going to get mushy….but whatever, its part of the process. I scoop some onions and broth into each little dish, place a slice of bread on the top and cover the lip of the bowl and the bread with 3-4 slices of Swiss cheese (slices were made from a skinny block, if you bought already sliced cheese I would say one or two would be enough) then place them on a cookie sheet and put in the oven. BROIL them for 3-5 minutes until cheese is melted and golden. Take them out let them cool briefly then ENJOY!!!