French Onion Soup
It looks pretty tasty
Time: 2 Hours 32 minutes
Ingredient Availability: 3/5
Difficulty: 1/5
I’ve never had French onion soup before, so I’m not exactly sure what to expect. Well, yeah I expect it to be oniony, but I don’t have any expectations beyond that. I’d been wanting to make this recipe ever since I saw it in An Unapologetic Cookbook and I think I made it at a perfect time as winter comes to an end.
Key Ingredients and Omissions:
There are a few things that I left out or had to substitute. For one, I’m not an alcohol drinker. So, I wasn’t going to buy bourbon just to use 2 tablespoons. Good thing that was actually optional. I used sweet onions instead of specifically Vidalia onions, as the grocery store I went to didn’t have the latter. I used dry white wine instead of dry sherry, as I wasn’t able to find anything called dry sherry at the grocery store. I did decide to go ahead and buy a bottle of white wine, though. It was pretty inexpensive and it wasn’t optional in the recipe.
Tools:
Large Pot
Sharp Knife
Cooking review:
Slice Onions: 25 minutes
This recipe calls for 3.5 pounds of onions, so it took me a while to get through them all. Luckily, the onions I bought were actually a variety that don’t burn your eyes.
Cook Onions: 1 hour 4 minutes
After melting some butter in a large pot, I added all of the onions along with some salt. Stirring occasionally over about an hour, I caramelized the onions. When I noticed the onions starting to stick, I added a splash of water to loosen things up. This is pretty tedious, but not hard.
Add liquids and thyme: 40 minutes
I added the wine to the onions and let it cook down for about 3 minutes before adding the beef broth. It took about 6 minutes to come to a simmer. Next, I added the thyme, reduced the heat to maintain a simmer, and let it simmer for 28 minutes before adding the dry white wine and cooking for and additional 3 minutes. While the soup was simmering, I went ahead and shredded the cheeses.
Finishing: 23 minutes
I removed the soup from the heat and added the butter before seasoning to taste with salt and pepper. I heated the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, brushed some slices of baguette with olive oil and toasted them for 5 minutes. I ladled some soup into an oven safe bowl and topped it with the baguette slices and cheese. Finally, I put the soup under a broiler for about 3 minutes before serving.
Analysis:
This soup has a very strong deep flavor. It is intensely savory with a good level of sweetness. The bread stays crispy on top but gets soggy and chewy on the bottom, which is nice along with the chewy cheese. The onions are super soft and basically melt in your mouth. Back to the flavor. Yes, it is very flavorful, but there is a slight bitterness to it. It is a little off-putting to have it linger after swallowing. The cheese adds more texture than flavor in my opinion, just adding some chewiness with a little saltiness. This wasn’t the worst first impression for French onion soup, but I feel like it could’ve been better. I’m going to give it a 6/10. The ingredients list has a couple things that I feel like some may not be able to easily find. Sure, some people may have all the alcohol to make this as intended, but many people won’t want to buy wine and bourbon just to make this one soup. Maybe if I had all those ingredients it would’ve gotten rid of that bitterness. However, if it’s optional, it should still be good without it. Not to say that this isn’t good. It’s just not quite worth waiting 2 and a half hours for in my opinion.
