Quick French onion soup
This is my quick French onion soup recipe. It comes together in about two hours of cook time, which is ideal for a late dinner, or even lunch.
This is a recipe that is perfect for “when the mood strikes you” rather than having to plan ahead with my slower French onion soup recipes.
- 55 g unsalted butter
- 900 g yellow onions sliced in to 1/2 cm wide half circles
- 4 g sugar
- 8 g all-purpose flour
- 120 ml dry sherry
- 700 ml beef stock
- 10 ml fresh thyme chopped
- salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
- 225 g Gruyere cheese coarsely grated
- 1 French baguette sliced crosswise in 1 cm wide pieces
- Use a large Dutch oven or large, heavy, flat bottomed pot
- Melt the butter in the pot over a medium-low heat
- Spread the onions out in the pot making as thin a layer as you can
- Sprinkle the sugar over the onions
- Cook the onions for about 1 hour, stirring them about every 20 minutes to prevent them from sticking
- Wait until the onions caramelize and become a dark, mahogany brown.
- Sprinkle flour over the onions
- Stir the onions to get them coated with flour
- Pour sherry in to the pot
- Pour beef stock in to the pot
- Sprinkle the thyme over the mixture in the pot
- Turn up the heat slightly and bring the mixture to a simmer
- Partially cover the pot with a lid. Leave about a 1 cm gap to let some of the vapour escape
- Cook for 30 more minutes, which lets the flavours develop and combine
- Season to taste with salt and pepper, stir in the salt and pepper thoroughly, taste and adjust as necessary
- Turn on the oven broiler
- Slice the French baguette cross-wise in to 1 cm wide slices
- Grate the Gruyere cheese
- Lightly toast the slices of French baguette on both sides. Both make sure it is only lightly toast, just crisp and only just turning brown.
- Arrange four sizable oven-proof French onion soup bowls on a baking pan (the one with a lip around the outside).
- Fill each soup bowl with the base onion soup mixture to within about 3 cm of the top of the bowl
- Lay a toasted slices of French baguette into each bowl. You may need two slices to fill the bowl. It's also okay to cut slices to fit. Try and get a complete covering of the onion soup mixture.
- Sprinkle grated Gruyere over each soup bowl
- Carefully slide the baking pan with the soup bowls under the broiler flame
- Toast the French onion soup under the broiler until the cheese has melted and is starting to brown around the edges.
When you've got your soup under the broiler, watch it like a hawk because the soup can quickly go from "nothing's happening, nope, nothing's happening, is this thing even on?" right in to "aw, shit!" in about 20 seconds.
You will probably want to plan on grating a few extra clumps of Gruyere cheese because it is inevitable that you or anyone else in the kitchen is going to snitch some grated cheese.
Generally you want to make sure the flour gets thoroughly stuck to the onions before you add the sherry, otherwise two things will happen. The onions won't develop that nice, browned flour taste, and the sherry will cause the flour to clump into horrible white lumps.
If you are like me and sometimes forget to add the flour before the sherry (oops! skipped a step!) then it's okay to add the flour after the sherry, it will still thicken up the soup, but be sure to temper the flour with a small amount of the soup mixture in a separate mixing cup first.
You will notice that this French onion soup recipe uses Thyme rather than Bay leaves. Bay leaves have a much more subtle flavour profile that takes longer to develop, hence the Thyme makes for a quicker development of the flavour in a shorter amount of time.