French Onion Soup

The best onion soup is made with not one variety of onion, but two! And lots of them!

You’ll need a profuse amount of onions to make this recipe and once you chop them, it takes a long time to cook them down. However, your patience will be rewarded. That’s because there’s a lot of flavour in caramelization and you can only achieve that with time.

The secret is to use red onions in combination with either Spanish or Vidalia.

Port

There are plenty of onion soup recipes advocating white wine over red wine and vice versa. But nothing compares to the robust flavour of Port.

When Hubs was studying for his chef’s certificate, he took two courses to learn about wine. Port was a clear winner for this recipe because it fits right in with the sweetness of the caramelized onion. Choose a port you love and you can't go wrong.

Cider

Using unfiltered apple cider amps up the bold rich flavour of this onion soup. Keep layering on that flavour!

UPDATE: a few people have mistaken apple cider for apple cider vinegar. There is NO vinegar in this recipe.

Cheese

While gruyere is traditional in onion soup, a rich, creamy, nutty cheese like fontina will balance the robust flavour of this soup.

Stock up

Hubs has made a vegetarian version of this with vegetable stock, but I don’t consider that version the world’s best. On the other hand, a combo of beef and chicken stock really clicks. The secret is to use homemade stocks, where possible, for best results. We always make homemade chicken stock from scratch, but have admittedly cheated with a powdered beef broth on occasion.

Skip the Bread

Growing up, every restaurant I ordered french onion soup in served it with bread and cheese floating on top. Of course, I loved the cheese; hated the soggy bread. No matter how you time it, the bread never holds up.

So what’s the substitute? Crack an egg on top, broil it and melt the cheese over that. The yolk from the egg adds extra creaminess and it won’t go mushy.

Follow this recipe and you’ll end up with a deep mahogany flavour bomb. For the two different types of onions select the 5 biggest ones; the bigger the better.

When cutting the onions, be sure to form your fingers into a ‘claw’. When the knife butts up against your knuckles, you can’t accidentally cut your fingers.

Hubs used to stir the egg into the soup, like an egg drop soup, but now his preference is to leave the egg whole. Adjust the recipe any way you like it, or leave it out altogether!

Once you crack an egg in, cook it then add the cheese, put it back into the oven until it’s bubbly.

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