Onion Soup
Date Completed: 12/28/2021
Today’s write-up comes from the Sauces & Soups chapter of The French Chef Cookbook. Of course, Soupe à l’Oignon Gratinée.
To “achieve true homemade taste” Julia recommends using a homemade beef bouillon. Fortunately for me, we have a wonderful butcher shop within walking distance that supplied a lovely beef stock.
I did enjoy caramelizing the onions! The recipe calls for a pound and a half of sliced yellow onions. Oh, the tears!
The sliced onions go into a large pot, covered, for 25-30 minutes on medium low heat. After that, you uncover to add salt and sugar. The sugar helps provide the browning as it caramelizes which makes sense! You raise the heat to medium high and stir frequently until the onions are golden brown.
Once the onions reach the appropriate level of brown, you stir in a few tablespoons of flour. The purpose of the step made sense to me in order to thicken the soup, but it was not a pretty process getting the flour to absorb into the onions to form a paste.
The mixture finally came together when I added in the first cup of beef stock. Julia instructs you to stir this in with a “wire whip” - I just love that term for a whisk!
After that you add the rest of the beef stock as well as wine and seasonings. The soup simmers on the stove for another 30-40 minutes. That’s it for the basic recipe!
We had to take it a step further by adding the bread and cheese, though! We actually purchased two soup crocks specifically for this recipe. They are too cute!
To make the “Gratinée” part, you start by making toasting slices of French bread with oil. These are called croûtes! We made this in the midst of our Easy Artisan Bread obsession so the bread itself was also homemade.
You portion the soup into each crock, also adding a bit of cognac (I used brandy). I also shaved a bit of raw onion into the bowls. Then we topped each portion with grated Gruyère cheese, followed by a croûte and more cheese.
These went back into the oven for about 30 minutes. We turned the broiler on at the end to get a fully browned effect on the cheese!
Taste Report:
Oh I hate to say it, but I did not love this soup! I think it was my fault, though! I believe I added too much salt and the saltiness got overly concentrated.
I did freeze half of the mixture and it was better the second time around. I watered it down and added more brandy when reheating, so that helped!
Mess Report:
The mess really wasn’t too bad for this recipe! It just always hurts cleaning up the mess when the taste of the dish wasn’t completely over the top. Oh well!
We discovered a great French restaurant nearby, and they have a French onion soup on their menu. We’ll have to try it made by a professional before we decide whether or not to attempt it again!
Now to find another recipe I can use these cute soup crocks for!