French Onion Soup
I wanted to do a French Onion for the soup course of the most recent Supper Club. I feel like it is a perfect winter soup; full of seasonal flavor, hearty with bread and cheese, umami beefy goodness. But I had never made a French Onion soup before. So this required quite a bit of research. I found two recipes on YouTube that I really liked and must have watched a dozen times each from two chefs I highly respect, Ludo Lefebvre, and Matty Matheson. I took ideas from both and combined them to make a variation of French Onion soup to call my own.
I made this recipe for 6 people and it yielded two additional portions, so you may need to adjust the recipe depending on how many people you want to serve, but as I once heard David Chang say “You only ever make a recipe once, every time after that you are adjusting it to make it your own.” This is just a loose guide to achieve the basic building blocks.
Ingredients:
6(+) Onions (variety of your choice, I used 1 red onion, 2 vidalia onions, 1 Spanish yellow onion, 1 white onion, and a handful of shallots)
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons of quality butter (KerryGold)
8 cloves garlic
48oz beef stock
24oz beef bone broth
1 cup Sherry wine
1/2 cup brandy
2 bay leaves
fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste
Worcestershire sauce
Ingredients cont.
baguette or bread
2 tablespoons butter
Italian seasoning or herb blend
garlic powder
sea salt
fresh cracked pepper
shredded cheeses (Swiss is traditional, I used a combination of Swiss, gouda and provolone)
Method:
Chop and slice all the onions in various sizes, add olive oil and butter to a large soup pan or dutch oven on medium low heat and add onions to reduce and caramelize. It is important to do this process slowly on medium heat to ensure the onions don’t burn and become bitter. After about 20 min of stirring reduction, chop and add garlic and continue. Add salt and peeper to season your onions. In a separate soup pan, add the Beef stock and bone broth and reduce by 1/3 (to condense flavor).
After the onions have sweat off for about 45 min and are nicely caramelized and cooked down, add the Sherry wine, brandy and beef reduction to the large soup pan. Additionally, add the thyme and bay leaves. Bring up to a boil then reduce and let simmer on the stovetop for 2 hours. Check and stir periodically. If liquid becomes too low, you can add water or more beef broth. Add a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce to bring out the beefy flavor and remove the bay leaves and thyme stems before serving.
Once your soup is in good shape, you can make the croutons for the individual servings. If you are cooking for a large group it is easier to do them all at once on a cookie sheet in the oven, if you are only serving one or two bowls I recommend toasting off in a pan on the stovetop. Slice the bread about an inch thick, you want to make sure there is some body to it to be able to soak up the broth. You can use butter or oil to toast them off, and sprinkle some garlic powder, herbs, and fresh pepper over the top to flavor the bread. Whether you are baking the croutons off in the oven or in a pan on the stovetop, be sure to toast both sides, so the bread doesn’t just soak up all the broth and turn to mush.
Spoon out the soup into an oven safe ramekin or french onion soup bowl and place the toasted croutons in top with your favorite shredded cheeses and broil until the cheese is melted and bubbling. The other method, which I prefer if you have the available tools and want to add a little table side flare, is to use a flambé torch to melt the cheese on top. It’s faster than a broiler, easy to control, and brings an awe inspired smile to anyone witnessing the process. Either way this recipe is sure to please! A delicious umami, beefy, savory cheesy, goupy, soup for a cold or rainy day!
