The weather is miserable, the temperature has dropped and getting out of bed in the morning is nigh on impossible. But, rejoice! The best scrans on the planet are back in season.
Call me grim all you want, but autumn is definitely one of my favourite seasons for this exact reason.
This French Onion Soup recipe was so popular it literally shut down my site. It’s my go-to for cold days. Get the recipe here: pic.twitter.com/tPAI3WQtCL
— Andrew Zimmern (@andrewzimmern) December 18, 2022
From pies to lamb shanks, from casseroles to slow cookers, autumn signals a return of the dishes that Britain does best, hearty beige grub.
Soups, for that matter, are arguably the definition of comfort eating.
French onion soup – or soupe à l’oignon gratinée – is a classic French dish made with caramelized onions and beef stock or broth.
Additionally, the soup typically contains wine or sherry, which isn’t typical or necessary in other onion soups.
I’ve never tried my hand at this before, but by god was I excited to give it a crack.
French onion soup sounds very posh to me. Well, in all fairness, put ‘French’ in front of any food and it sounds posh to me, so I was slightly nervous about giving it a go.
However, I’ve seen Gordon Ramsay rollock enough people (“YOU FRENCH PIG!”) on Kitchen Nightmares to know where people go wrong.
French onion soup is very popular, especially on cold days (Image: Newsquest)
How I made French onion soup in 4 easy steps
Step 1 – Ingredients
This may come as a surprise, but you’ll need onions, lots of them. I went to Tesco and bought 7.
The rest of the ingredients are also easy to find: Unsalted butter, rosemary, thyme, a dry white wine, one baguette, beef stock and gruyère cheese (this is quite expensive so you can also opt for mozzarella).
Simples.
Step 2 – Sweat them bad boys
Spend several weeks chopping the onions. Peel them, cut them in half, and thinly slice them into half moons.
Get yourself a big pot and add a little butter and olive oil, wait until it’s bubbling and then add your onions.
This is the longest part of the process but it’s very simple. Season and then fold the onions over and over until they eventually caramelize.
Step 3 – We call it a soup kitchen
Now we need to turn our onions into a soup.
Add a glass and a half of dry white wine and reduce by about 70%, you’ll want to make sure you get rid of all the alcohol. Pour yourself a glass as well because you damn well deserve it.
After that’s reduced, add around 1000ml of beef stock and a sprig of rosemary and thyme.
Season again.
That’s it, simple, right?
Step 4 – Get cheesy with it
If you want to go all out, get yourself some oven-proof bowls.
You’ll want to cut your baguette into chunks, smother with olive oil and toast in the oven for about 10 minutes. Then, ladle soup into the bowl to about 90% full, place some toasted baguette on the top and cover with your chosen cheese.
Place the bowl of soup back in the oven and let the cheese gently cascade over the bread and bowl. If you get this right, you’ll know your hard work has paid off.
If you don’t have oven-proof bowls then no matter, just melt some cheese over the baguette slices and then pop on top at the end.
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The result
For my first attempt, I was made up with how it turned out.
In all honesty, I wasn’t a massive fan of the cheese toastie on the top, I could feel my arteries chastising me with every mouthful, but the soup itself was amazing, or incroyable (chefs kiss).
I couldn’t finish it all, no chance, so left the remainder and then tucked in as and when during the rest of the week.
It was the perfect dish to warm me up, I highly recommend it.
