Classic French Onion Soup Recipe with Crostini and Gruyere Cheese

Hey guys, Chef Billy Parisi here. Thank you so much for stopping by my channel. Today I'm going to show you how to make a classic French onion soup with homemade crostinis, gruyere cheese, and fresh thyme. When making onion soup traditionally, I like to use a couple different onions. I like to use yellow, I like to use white, sometimes I even use red onions. But you want to remove the ends, you want to cut it in half, and then you want to take the time to peel that outer shell, which is actually just windburn from when the onions come up above the ground. And next you want to slice them in half, not too thick, not too thin, maybe about a quarter to a half inch thick. If you do it too thick, then you've got these gigantic onions in your soup, and if you do it too thin, you can't take the time to devote to caramelizing the onions to get them full of flavor. So once you're done slicing them, I'm just going to put them in a bowl. I like to keep all my food in one place, like we used to say in the culinary world, mise en place. And I'm using a big rondeau pot, which is sort of a shorter but wider pot. It helps cook the onions more evenly. We're going to add in a little bit of butter. Okay, we're going to add in all the butter. Once it begins to melt is when you want to add in your sliced onions. I know this is going to look like a lot of onions, but trust me, they're going to cook down significantly, and honestly they may end up being an eighth or a tenth of what this pot is once they're done cooking. It seriously takes some time to caramelize. You need to constantly stir, and you need to keep it over low to medium heat, and really just want to be focused on getting it brown, getting all those great colors in place on our onions. While they are cooking, we're going to smash some garlic. You do this by putting one hand over the other, pressing it down, and this sort of removes the cloves from the bulbs. And from there, what you want to do is trim the ends off, which is sort of just like the stem, if you will. And after you get done doing that, a really easy way to remove the clove from the peel on the outside is just by using the back end of your knife and sort of just pressing down, smashing a little bit. It breaks up the garlic, but it's no big deal, because honestly we're going to mince them anyways. So remove the garlic clove from the outside peel, and once that is done, it's really when you want to start mincing. And I like to have it pretty finely minced. I don't like big chunks of garlic in my onion soup or anything for that matter. So once it is kind of to that very small rice, think of maybe Mediterranean couscous, we're going to put it in a bowl and sort of put it by the onions. We're not going to throw it in yet, just want to keep it in our general vicinity. We want to continue to caramelize our onions. We've been doing this for about 10 to 12 minutes so far, and once they start to get a little bit of brown on them, like it looks here, I actually like to add a little bit of sugar in there. This can help further caramelize the onions, and in addition, it can also help add some nice sweetness that perhaps maybe your onions won't give off while being cooked. So just stir that in, continue to get them really really nice and brown. While those are browning, we're going to add in the garlic, because we're actually maybe 5 to 10 minutes away from this being cooked completely before we can add in some of the other ingredients. It's very important to deglaze your onions with red wine, and like I always say when it comes to cooking with wine, if you would not drink it, then you better not cook with it. And I use a Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon. Cabernet is a little bit of a drier red wine, but along with the sweetness from the sugar and the onions, it should balance out really really nicely. And go ahead and give yourself a little taste, or pour an even bigger glass if you'd like, just to make sure that it's a tasty enough wine that you want to cook with. So what we're going to do is deglaze the pot with some of that red wine, about two cups worth, and don't worry because a lot of it's going to cook out over that medium heat. It's going to evaporate and soak into the onions, but it's going to really provide a ton of wonderful flavor for our onion soup. Once there's just a little bit of liquid left, what we're going to do now is add in some beef stock. Sometimes in the past I've done half chicken stock, half beef stock. I'm going all beef this time, just looking for some really rich flavors. It's starting to get cold outside, and I want a really really hearty soup. So we want to cook that over low heat and simmer it, and in the meantime what we're going to do is slice up a french baguette, about half inch to three quarter inches thick. These are going to act as our croutons, they're sort of our top bread crostinis that go on our soup. And I always like to try the end piece, because, well, bread is in front of me, so why not. Add the crostinis to a sheet tray lined with parchment paper, and I always use parchment paper here, just so nothing sticks or none of that tinny flavor comes off the metal onto my food. And then once you've spaced everything out on the sheet tray like little soldiers, I've got a little bit of melted butter here, and I'm going to take the time to brush each little piece of bread with the unsalted melted butter. It's always important to use unsalted when using butter so you can season it yourself and you have all the control there. Once the crostinis are all buttered up, I'm going to season them with a little bit of kosher salt, which is a little bit bigger salt, tastes better than iodized, you might use a little bit more. And next, some fresh ground black pepper. We want to make sure these crostinis taste good, even though our soup will be tasty and full of flavor. Every step and every level of every recipe you make should be seasoned and taste well. And, of course, Gruyere cheese. It's incredibly traditional to use with French onion soup. It is expensive. You're looking at at least about $18.99 a pound, but the incredible intense flavor from it, it's aged in caves, and it's just so good and really provides a lot of body, a lot of depth, and some unbelievable flavor to French onion soup. I had a half extra left over in the fridge, which I used that and bought a whole nother one, so yeah, I'm in for about $16 worth of Gruyere cheese. I'm going to simply put it in a bowl and set it to the side. Go back to our crostinis, and they are done. They were in the oven at 375 degrees for about 12 to 15 minutes. You just want to get them brown and toasted up. What we're going to do is set those to the side, and while our onion soup is still cooking, I'm going to mince out some fresh thyme. I don't mind using dry herbs when making soup, but I really love using fresh herbs. And when it comes to using fresh herbs in anything, you want to finish it with fresh herbs. Dry herbs take some time to reconstitute. That's why you put them in at the beginning, and you use fresh herbs at the end. So once you get that fine mince, and it's okay to use the stem. There's a lot of flavor in the stem, but if you fine mince it, you're going to be in good shape. We're going to pour it into our onion soup. We're also going to give it a quick stir, and now we're going to season it with kosher salt. And season high. Sprinkle it all over the place. Get it nice and mixed in. And of course, some fresh ground pepper. I'm going to give it a little stir, and next, you want to taste it. It's incredibly important to taste. You season once, you taste twice. Taste it, season it, taste it again. If it needs more seasoning, fine. I found that it desperately needed some sort of vinegar, so I added some balsamic vinegar, and it really intensified the flavor of the soup and made it extremely well balanced. And I think once you get a taste, you're going to love it as well. We're going to pour our soup into a couple little soup crocks. I'm going to try to show you what the final product will look like. We're going to top off with a few of those crostinis we made. And next, pile on high the gruyere cheese, as much as you want to put in there. We're going to put it under the broiler for about three to four minutes. You just want it to get it nice and browned and definitely melty. That sort of just runs all through that soup, and it's just, oh, so delicious. And be careful because these soup crocks are extremely hot. That's why when you get it in a restaurant, it's usually on a plate with a doily. So be careful when touching it. I know I used my fingers, but I've got some seriously thick calluses these days. And last but not least, you want to top off with some fresh thyme. All right, guys, our French onion soup is finished. You saw me top it off with the crostini that we made and some gruyere cheese. Gruyere is traditional when making French onion soup. Don't use Swiss cheese unless you're trying to save a few bucks because, honestly, the gruyere really enhances the flavor of this and, honestly, just takes it to that next level. We're going to give it a little bit of a taste here. Man, it's super good, really rich in flavor. You kind of get the complexity from the caramelized onion, a little bit of that sweetness there, some of the saltiness from the stock, and obviously the salt we added. And you get a really nice finish at the end with that balsamic vinegar. Honestly, that was a game changer. It's really, really good. That's all I got for today, man. Thanks for checking out my video. Obviously, enjoy a glass of wine with this French onion soup after you make it. And please be sure to subscribe to my channel. There's a subscribe button below the video and somewhere floating around this video. I haven't figured out where I'm going to put it yet. I've got a lot of recipe videos. Some are close up, some are a little bit farther away, some are me on camera talking directly to you, but I would love to sub. And we'll catch up with you next time, okay? See you guys.