French Onion Soup

Hopefully the picture above accurately depicts just how amazing this soup was. As my wife said, the "soup" is just an excuse to get bread, cheese, and onions into your mouth.  And she found a perfect way to do just that.  I told her I haven't always been a big fan of French onion soup. But if it were made like this more often, then there would be no denying my allegiance.

As the name clearly indicates, you're going to use a lot of onion in this dish. So slice up two large onions and add them to a stock pot with some oil or butter, and start caramelizing them.

The trick to caramelized onions is patience. Don't be tempted to turn up the heat and try to speed the process up.  You'll just burn the onions and have to start all over.

The steam got in the way of a better picture. But here's what you're looking for in color and consistency.  This will take a lot of that strong onion taste out, and release the natural sweetness in onions.  Then you start to build your soup by adding stock.  You can use chicken broth, beef broth, or a combination of both. Add some water so it isn't too rich. You can add red wine or sherry for more depth of flavor. Season with thyme, bay leaf, salt, and black pepper.

In the meantime, take some nice rolls or a good loaf of bread and tear it into chunks.  Throw them into the oven to make your own croutons.  These will really bulk up your soup and add to the decadence of the whole experience.

Once you have given the flavors in your soup time to marry, transfer some to an oven safe bowl and add the croutons. Then top the whole thing with Gruyere or mozzarella cheese and throw them under the broiler.

Be careful when you're using the broiler. You need to watch very closely because it only takes a few seconds to go from perfectly golden & bubbly ... to burnt and acrid. Don't let your momentary lapse of concentration ruin a dish at the very last second.

Once you break through that gooey layer of cheese, waiting below is a rich & caramely broth with totally saturated bread chunks. It's like if French Dip and Grilled Cheese had a baby, and that baby was a soup.

Oh. My. God. This soup is delicious. It's one of those things where you try to eat slowly, taking time to savor each bite, and try to make the experience last. I even ate way too much because it was just that good.