(upbeat music) - Today, I'm gonna teach
you how to make an easy and impressive French onion soup. (chuckles) 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. All right, give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done. That was a lot of onions. Now we're gonna take a
large pot or Dutch oven. I'm using my five and a
half court 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 gonna 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 gonna quickly mince
up two large garlic cloves. Now that our onions are caramelized, we're gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 toasts 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 gonna 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. Ooh! 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 gonna serve this
up in these fun little bowls that I found, and there's a
couple of 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. (chuckles) Okay. And then we're gonna 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 top with more cheese
and pop them in the boiler for a few minutes. But we're going to show you an easy way. Okay. So these breads, we're
gonna just pile them high with a bunch of cheese and then
we're gonna 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 gonna put these under
the boiler for a few minutes, just until the cheese is
melty and golden brown. (upbeat music) 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, the cheese in the bowl
has had some time to melt and become gooey and now we're gonna 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. 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 curtains 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. You do want to give the
croutons a little bit of time to soften. Then they're easier to
get with your spoon. We're just gonna go right into the soup. Look at that. Look at that cheesiness. Love that cheese pull. Oh my goodness. That's irresistible. Yum, oh that just keeps going. Woo, okay. Gonna try this right now. It's gonna be hot, so. Careful. This has just such a rich flavored broth. It is absolutely delicious. And now we need to get
one of those croutons. 'Cause that is my favorite part. The cheesy croutons. Okay, look at that cheese pull, you guys. Yum, okay. Mm. 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 precook 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. (laughs) French onion soup is the
ultimate comfort food. And I hope this becomes
your new favorite recipe. We'll see you next time.
