FRENCH ONION SOUP | How To Make Onion Soup

Today I'm going to teach you how to make an easy and impressive French onion soup. Hey everybody, it's Natasha of natashaskitchen.com and get excited. This is one of my all-time favorite soups. You'll be surprised how easy it is to make a restaurant quality French onion soup at home and learn all the secrets for the best flavor and you'll love the topping and I'm hungry so let's get started. You'll need three pounds or six large yellow onions and these are just basic yellow onions. Yellow onions are my favorite for making French onion soup because as they caramelize they release just the right amount of sweetness. I know it's a lot of onions but they're super easy to prep. Cut off both sides and peel off the onion skin. To make the process really fast and easy, I like to prep and peel all of the onions before I start slicing them. Sometimes that dry outer layer can be tough to remove from the onion so I usually just end up taking the top two layers. It makes the process so much faster. Make sure you remove every part of the onion that looks brown, shriveled, or dry. And here come the onion tears. It's hard to avoid them when you're working with this much onions. I'd love to hear your best tips for avoiding onion tears but here's my favorite and it seems to be the only thing that works well for me. My husband's ski goggles or you can use some swimming goggles as long as your eyes are covered up. Once all your onions are prepped, thinly slice them. You'll see that I'm slicing them parallel with the grain of the onion. Slicing the onions this way is easy and it'll look much more appealing when you're done. Alright, give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done. That was a lot of onions. Now we're going to take a large pot or dutch oven. I'm using my five and a half quart dutch oven here. Place that over medium heat and add two tablespoons of olive oil and two tablespoons of unsalted butter. As soon as that butter is melted, add all of the sliced onions. And it's going to seem like a ton of onions but they do shrink down as they caramelize. Saute those onions uncovered for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. After 10 minutes, the onions should start to soften and to help them caramelize faster, we're going to sprinkle them with half a teaspoon of granulated sugar. Stir that together then continue sauteing uncovered for another 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally until the onions are caramelized and browned. Make sure that towards the end you are stirring more frequently to prevent scorching or burning the onions. Properly caramelizing does take time and don't be tempted to increase the heat because you're more likely to burn the onions. It'll be well worth it in the end. When the onions are just about there, we're going to quickly mince up two large garlic cloves. Now that our onions are caramelized, we're going to add the minced garlic and saute another minute until the garlic is fragrant. Now stir in half a cup of dry sherry. You want to make sure to use a dry sherry so the soup doesn't end up overly sweet. Scrape the bottom of the pot to deglaze and get all of that great onion flavor and continue cooking for about three minutes or until all of the sherry has cooked out. Now we're going to add eight cups of beef stock or beef broth. Beef stock works better than chicken or vegetable broth because it'll give you the richest flavor and color. Season the soup with a teaspoon of salt then add one bay leaf and a few sprigs of fresh thyme. Bring that to a boil then partially cover, reduce the heat to a simmer and continue cooking for another 30 minutes. While that soup is finishing up, we're going to work on our classic french onion soup crouton topping. Use a serrated knife to slice a baguette into half inch thick slices. They'll look even prettier if you cut them diagonally. I'm having my son practice his knife skills and you can see he's wearing a safety glove which gets a lot of use in our kitchen for practice. I will leave a link to these in the notes. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and place your baguette slices onto a baking sheet. Because we're going to toast these and we want them to brown nicely, brush both sides with a little bit of olive oil. Make sure to flip them over and brush that second side because you want the outsides to be nice and crisp. Now bake those in a preheated oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about six to eight minutes or until they're golden brown at the edges. The best cheese for french onion soup is a gruyere. We're using an eight ounce block of gruyere cheese and we're going to shred that on the large holes of a box grater. Once they're done, remove the little crouton toast from the oven and set them aside until you're ready to plate your soup. All right, our soup has been simmering for about 30 minutes developing all that yummy flavor. We're going to season it to taste. I like to add another half a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of black pepper. Also make sure to remove the bay leaf and the sprigs of thyme. All right, we're just about there at the taste test and my kitchen smells amazing. This actually smells really good. It doesn't smell like scary onion smell, okay? My kitchen smells so good and I cannot wait to do this taste test. So we're going to serve this up in these fun little bowls that I found and there's a couple ways to top them. Let me show you. Oh, beautiful and it's crazy how just a few ingredients create amazing flavor. Okay, here we go. This soup will make you love onions. Okay, get a generous amount there and one more for the husband or my son because he loves this too. Okay, top it off. All right, and then once the hot soup is in the bowls, I do like to sprinkle on a little bit of that gruyere cheese so that it can melt into the soup. This cheese is so good. It's mild in flavor and so pleasant and it melts beautifully. You get that awesome cheese pull. Yum! Just when you think you've added enough, add a little bit more. Okay, and then we're going to finish off these little toasts that we have. So we've toasted these in the oven with a little bit of olive oil but now what we're going to do is top them off with a little bit more cheese and if your dishes are broiler safe, then you can just do this on top after the cheese. Put on the croutons, top with more cheese and pop them in the broiler for a few minutes but we're going to show you an easy way. Okay, so these breads, we're going to just pile them high with a bunch of cheese and then we're going to toast the breads in the oven. Okay, and that's the signature thing about french onion soup is it's just swimming in this gruyere cheese. Oh, and if you haven't tried this cheese, it is a real treat. Every cheese lover's dream. That's what this soup is. Okay, we're going to put these under the broiler for a few minutes just until the cheese is melty and golden brown. All right, our toasts are cheesy and melted and we are ready to serve this french onion soup and I could not be more excited. This is one of my favorites, seriously. Okay, so the cheese in the bowl has had some time to melt and become gooey and now we're going to add our cheesy croutons. Look at that, oh my goodness. My heart is going pitter-pat. Look at this cheese. Wow, okay, yum. And you can put two or three into each bowl depending on how big your bowls are, really. We'll just start with two. Okay, oh my goodness, yum, yum. I just want to eat these. Just start snacking right now. Okay, and then the soup gets absorbed into those croutons and they just become irresistibly good. I do love to garnish this with a little bit of fresh thyme. You can also do a little bit of fresh chives if you prefer. Okay, we're ready to dig in. I can't wait any longer. This is the moment I've been waiting for. Okay, you do want to give the croutons a little bit of time to soften, then they're easier to get with your spoon. And we're just going to go right into the soup. Look at that, look at that cheesiness. I love that cheese pull. Oh my goodness, that's irresistible. Yum, oh that just keeps going. Okay, I'm just going to try this right now. It's going to be hot, so careful. Oh, this has just such a rich flavored broth. It is absolutely delicious. And now we need to get one of those croutons because that is my favorite part, the cheesy croutons. Okay, look at that cheese pull, you guys. Yum, okay. This is absolutely a holiday worthy soup. The best part is you can totally make it ahead of time. It's one of those soups that just gets better with time. So you can completely pre-saute the onions, you can completely pre-cook the whole soup and then just make the cheesy croutons right before you serve it. It is such an impressive soup to serve. Restaurant quality from the comfort of your kitchen and free refills. Well, kind of free. I did buy the ingredients. French onion soup is the ultimate comfort food and I hope this becomes your new favorite recipe. We'll see you next time.