French Onion Soup

Now that cool weather is here, it's soup season, and that means French Onion Soup.  It is so common these days to find French Onion Soup made with beef broth as the base that some may think that it's not easy to make vegetarian.  But actually, since the main flavor should be the onions, it makes sense that French Onion Soup can easily be meatless, and I actually make it regularly.  And, it's actually quite easy to make.

French Onion Soup starts with caremelizing the onions which brings out their rich sweetness and develops the lovely rust color.  This is actually the most important part, as it is the base flavor for the whole soup.  Some places throw onions into beef broth and call it a day, but good French Onion shouldn't fall back on the broth; the flavor has to come from the caramelized onions.  You have to just take your time and do it.  I like to use a combination of butter and vegetable oil to slowly caramelize the onions, which helps prevent the butter from burning.  Once the onions are caramelized, I throw in a couple of cloves of finely minced or pressed garlic, to sautee with the onions very briefly.  The garlic goes in at the very end, as garlic always does, so that it doesn't burn.

Into the pot with all the onions goes a little veggie stock, to deglaze the pot.  Then fill the pot up with veggie stock and water, about equal parts of each.  The taste of the veggie stock is important; homemade stock is best.  If you don't have that, boullion and water is ok.  'Better Than Boullion' pastes are a favorite boullion alternative.  However, there are very few canned veggie broths that I think are good.  Salt and pepper to taste, and I use some herbs, like thyme or herbs de provence, depending on what I'm feeling like.  If I want a bit of heat, I add crushed red pepper.  No matter what, I always add wine.  White wine works great; cooking sherry is fine, too. 

After simmering the soup for a few minutes, all that is left is to build the bowls.  I do the traditional cheese-on-bread-on-soup structure.  I like to use a bread that is crisp but not too crusty, or it will be too hard to "cut" with the spoon.  The bread is cut to fit into the bowls, and then laid on top of the soup, which fills up about 2/3 of the bowl (or mini crock or whatever), and then slathered with cheese.  For the cheese, I like to use a combination of mozzarella and gruyere (or swiss).  To get it melty, the bowls get placed under the broiler for about 3 minutes or until the cheese is bubbling and golden brown on top.

Soup, bread, cheese - there is nothing wrong with that, ever.  I think I want some right now... I have made myself hungry just talking about it!

Happy eating!