French Onion Soup

Welcome back everyone. Today we're going to be making a French onion soup gratin. We're going to go through the entire process, everything from properly caramelizing the onions to the delicious golden brown cheesy topping. We're also going to go over a little bit of the history of how this dish came to be as well. So let's not waste any more time and let's get to it. Okay, the first thing we need for French onion soup are onions. A lot of onions that is. So I'm going to start with four baseball sized yellow onions. Cut the ends off and cut them pole to pole into roughly 1 quarter to 1 third inch slices. We're going for roughly two pounds here, but it doesn't have to be exact. I'm slightly over as you can see, but it'll work just fine. Once you're finished with your knife work, place a soup pot over low to medium heat and add one tablespoon of butter along with our onions. This may look like a lot of onions at this point, but they are going to cook down considerably. Add roughly one teaspoon each salt and sugar and we're going to cook this for a few minutes or until the onions lose some of their rigidity. This should take about five minutes and at that point we can cover the pot with a lid and allow them to sort of steam and sweat for about 30 minutes. And while that's going on, let's step away for a minute and learn a little bit about the history of French onion soup. Now while onion soups have been around for thousands of years, what most often comes to mind is the dark brown soup that's served in crocks topped with bread and cheese and browned under a broiler. There are a few theories how this humble yet delicious soup can trace its roots. Both of them involve King Louis XV in some sort. Here he is right here, and holy ----, while I was thinking wearing bow ties was fashionable, I've now realized that I could have been wearing something like this all along. So the story goes that the king returned to his hunting lodge after a long day of hunting only to find onions, champagne, and butter. He then proceeded to create the first version of one of the most beloved dishes in the world. Now for obvious reasons, this origin story seems highly unlikely to be true. I find it very difficult to believe that a king who lived in this house, on this property, had essentially no food other than butter, onions, and champagne. Anyway, the main character of the second story is Stanislaw Leszczynski, the Duke of Lorraine and the former king of Poland. On his way to visit his daughter, Queen Marie, wife of Louis XV, he stopped in Chalon and He was so impressed with the soup that he basically insisted on learning the recipe prior to leaving the restaurant and continuing on his journey. This story doesn't claim that he actually invented the soup, rather that he was the one who popularized it. Now while the truthfulness of either of these stories is pretty much unknown, the second one does appear to be a little bit more believable, but who knows. Now the modern version of the soup appears to have taken roots in the 1800s in a massive open-air market known as Les Halles in Paris, France. Restaurants surrounding the market, as well as outdoor vendors within the market, served onion soup and other soups such as cabbage soup. This appears to be where the gratin-a-cheese topping took root. The popularity of the dish grew from there and spread across Europe and eventually all across the world. Anyway, that's it for now, let's get back to it. Okay, checking back in on our onions, we're about 15 minutes in and they've softened up slightly and they've lost about a third of their volume. Go ahead and toss the lid back on and let's get our croutons ready. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and you want to use a relatively sturdy bread for this. I'm using this sourdough bread that I picked up at Aldi and the cool thing about this is that it's already sliced up. If yours isn't pre-sliced, cut the bread into 1 1⁄2 inch slices, then stack a few slices up and cut them down the middle and place them on a sheet tray. Brush both sides with olive oil or melted butter. This will help distribute heat along the slices and brown them more evenly. On the topic of bread, the bread you find in the bread aisle won't be sturdy enough for this. You could make your own but the bakery section of most grocery stores will have some good options. Baguette bread would also make an excellent choice here. Okay, turning our attention back to the onions, they're still reducing down but they're not quite ready to move on to the next stage. So back on with the lid and let's check on the bread. It's been in the oven for about 10 minutes so let's flip the slices over and finish them off on the other side. Looking at these, 375 might have been a better choice as opposed to 400. In fact, this one over here is starting to get a bit burned so I'll set that one aside and throw the rest back in. You do have to pay close attention to them because they will go from done to burned very quickly. Okay, as you can see now, the onions have become fully softened and we can proceed to the next stage which is caramelization. You will also notice that the onions are simmering in their own juices. Do not drain this off. There are sugars not only from what we added earlier but from the onions themselves. These sugars are necessary to produce a proper caramelization effect. Unfortunately I forgot to move the camera around but I did remove the bread after about two more minutes in the oven. You can see here now that we're beginning to get a little bit of browning at the bottom of the pan. Go ahead and add about a tablespoon of water and scrape it up so that it doesn't burn. You'll probably have to repeat this a few times during this process but continue cooking and stirring until the onions become golden brown like this. Once you've reached this stage, we can deglaze the pan with two ounces of each red wine and dry sherry. And of course the wine I'm using is that cheap ---- that comes in a box and I invite you to do the same. We're not stuck up wine snobs on this channel. Continue stirring until the pot nearly dries up and once you've reached that point add five cups of brown beef stock, a pinch of salt, a few thyme sprigs, and one bay leaf. Then bring the soup up to a simmer for about 20 minutes or so. Going back to the caramelization process though, I almost forgot to mention that it is a time-consuming process. Do not crank the heat and try and speed it up. That process should take 30 to 45 minutes so be patient. Okay now that the soup has been simmering for a little bit, let's assemble everything and get it ready for the oven. Load up a soup crock or bowl of your choice with some soup followed by a layer of shredded Gruyere cheese, some of our croutons that I've broken by hand, and finally more Gruyere cheese. You might be asking the question, why didn't I just cut the bread smaller earlier? Well I kind of like the rustic idea of hand-broken croutons. Once you've got everything loaded up, place the soup under a broiler until the cheese melts and becomes golden brown. Gruyere cheese can be kind of pricey so I did do another one with some Swiss cheese slices which is a more budget-friendly option. I think slices are a better option for the bottom layer and shredded is a better option for the top layer. As you can see here, if you don't get the bread completely covered, it can burn very easily. And getting back to the one topped with shredded cheese, you can see that it's much easier to create a protective layer over the top of the bread. Well I greatly appreciate your viewership and I hope you enjoy this recipe. And with that, we've reached the end of the video. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time.