Deep Caramelized French Onion Soup
1 h 5 min · Medium
#budget#comfort#french#soup#winter
Almost nothing in it — onions, broth, bread, cheese — and yet it eats like the richest thing on the table. The whole trick is refusing to rush the onions: forty patient minutes turns them from sharp and white to sweet, jammy and mahogany dark.
Ingredientsfor 4 portions
- 8 medium Yellow Onion, halved and finely sliced
- 50 g Unsalted Butter
- 1200 ml Beef Bone Broth
- 150 ml Red Wine
- 8 slice Baguette, cut on the diagonal
- 150 g Swiss Cheese, grated; Gruyère if you can find it
- 20 g All-Purpose Flour
- 5 g Granulated Sugar
- 1 tbsp Thyme, leaves picked
- 2 leaf Bay Leaves
- 1.5 tsp Sea Salt
- 0.5 tsp Black Pepper
Steps
- Melt the butter in a wide heavy pot over medium-low heat, add all the sliced onions with the sugar and a good pinch of salt, and stir to coat. The pot will look absurdly full — they collapse to a quarter of the volume.
- Cook for 40–45 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until the onions are soft, jammy and deep mahogany brown. This is the entire recipe: rush it on high heat and you get burnt-edged onions in a thin broth instead of sweetness.
- When they start sticking, add a splash of water and scrape the sticky brown film off the base back into the onions. Repeat as often as it happens — every scrape puts colour and flavour back into the pot.
- Stir in the flour and thyme and cook for 1 minute, then pour in the wine and let it bubble hard for 2 minutes until the raw alcohol smell blows off.
- Add the broth and bay leaves, bring to a simmer and cook gently, uncovered, for 25 minutes. Season carefully at the end — the broth reduces and concentrates as it goes.
- Toast the baguette slices under a hot grill until dry and golden on both sides. Drying them out stops them dissolving into mush in the soup.
- Ladle the soup into ovenproof bowls, float the toasts on top and pile the cheese over them, letting some spill onto the rim where it will catch and crisp.
- Grill for 3–4 minutes until the cheese is molten, blistered and browning in patches. Serve immediately, and warn everyone that the bowls are dangerously hot.
