(soft intro music) - A classic french onion soup is based on fragrant caramelized onions and a hearty rich beef broth. Individual portions of that soup are then topped with a piece of bread, known as a crouton, and then a heavy fistful
of melted Gruyère cheese. It makes a show-stopping
first course for any meal. In this bowl here I have
about four pounds of onions that have been sliced, and I'm gonna finish slicing
up the last of the onions here. I just remove the root
and the tip of the onion, typically cut the onion in half and this makes it much easier to peel, and then just slice the onions. You want to slice them pole to pole, doesn't matter if the onions
are all completely even or not because they're gonna cook for so long, they break down so much that you won't be able to tell
the difference in the end. Add those to the rest of our onions. Now, in this pot here, this large dutch oven, I have four tablespoons
of unsalted melted butter that's been melting away
over medium-high heat. And to that, I'm gonna add all four
pounds of our sliced onions. And along with those sliced onions, I'm gonna add one teaspoon of sugar and one teaspoon of table salt, so we're gonna mix this all together. The sugar and salt are
gonna two things in here. One, they're both gonna help
pull moisture out of the onion. That moisture also contains some sugars, those natural sugars will
eventually caramelize, and the added sugar also helps expedite that caramelization process. So, it just gives it a
little bit of a boost. And for this, I used just basic yellow onions. You could use white
onions if you wanted to, there's no reason to use sweet onions like wallah wallah or vedalia onions, they're just gonna become too
sweet at the end of cooking. And these onions will cook down to be completely sweet
enough on their own. Okay, now at this stage, we're gonna put the lid on the pot, and we're gonna let the onions
cook for about 20 minutes. Now, the lid is gonna
trap the steam in there and that steam is gonna create
a hot cooking environment, and it's gonna help the onions breakdown and release their moisture. Okay, it's been 20 minutes, so we can take a look at our onions. You can see they've
released a ton of moisture. They're also very very soft at this point and that's exactly what we're looking for. So at this point, we're gonna continue to cook the onions for about five to 10 minutes, to drive off all this excess
liquid in the bottom of the pot so we can actually begin
the caramelization process. It's been about 10 minutes and you can see, we've driven off a fair amount
of liquid from these onions, and a little bit of fond, which is the browning that happens from the caramelization of the sugar, it started to form on
the bottom of the pot. And that's great. So, we're gonna reduce
the heat at this point to a medium, and we're gonna cook these onions slowly and give them a stir every now and then until they are really deep golden brown, and they have really
developed their sweetness. Now, if those little bits of
fond on the bottom of the pot start to burn or get too dark, you want to just be diligent
about scraping them up. And if you're unable to
scrape them up with a spoon, you can add a tablespoon or so of water just to help lift them
off the bottom of the pot. So, it's been about 40 minutes, and you can see that
our caramelized onions have changed quite a bit in their color, their look, and their texture. They are fully caramelized at this point. And you can also notice that there's a significant amount of fond in the bottom of the pot. Those bits of fond have a lot of flavor. We're going to add a cup of red wine to deglaze those bits of fond and once we pull them up, they're gonna incorporate
into the body of the soup. Same with all these caramelized onions, which are pretty sweet, we didn't want any more sweetness, we found that a cup of dry red wine added enough complexity to it. Bring this to a simmer and cook this until nearly
all that wine has evaporated. And we're gonna use our wooden spoon to just scrape up those bits of fond on the bottom of the pot, while we go. Okay, you can see that the red wine is nearly evaporated. And at this point, we're gonna add eight cups of beef broth. Now, since beef broth is a
predominant flavor in this soup, you want to make sure you get
a good quality beef broth. So again, eight cups of beef
broth going into the soup. And then on top of that, we're going to add a half
teaspoon of table salt, a half teaspoon of pepper, two bay leaves, and four sprigs of fresh thyme. So, we'll just give that a little stir. We'll increase the heat a little bit and bring this to a boil. Our soup has come to a boil now and we're gonna reduce
the heat to medium-low. And we're gonna let it simmer gently for about 30 minutes during which time it's gonna reduce and
concentrate in flavor. While that's going on, we can turn our attention to the croutons. Traditionally, when you get a crock of french
onion soup at a restaurant, the croutons are in a disk that cover the entire surface of the soup. So, I have six ounces of a baguette here, and we're just gonna cut
this into one inch pieces. So if there was an ah-ha moment for us when we were developing this recipe, it was to cut the croutons
into bite-size pieces, so they would actually fit in your spoon and fit in your mouth. So, gonna split it into
about four pieces length-wise and cut each one of these in half, and across-wise into
about one inch pieces. Okay, so now we could add
our croutons to a bowl, and we're gonna toast
these in the oven for a bit until they're nice an crispy. In order to help with the toasting, we're gonna add three tablespoons
of extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and a 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. We'll just stir them around to coat all the croutons evenly with the oil and the salt and pepper. We could just throw that onto a sheet pan and spread them out into an even layer. And we'll put these in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, til they're nice and
crisp and golden brown. The croutons are fully cooled, you can see they're nice
and crisp at this point. That's perfect. And our soup has also been
simmering for a good half hour and it's reduced and
concentrated in flavor, so we can go ahead and turn that off. We're just gonna fish out the bay leaves and the thyme sprigs. And at this point, this is our last opportunity
to season the soup before we put into our crocks, so we want to give it a taste and see if the salt and pepper is correct. It's pretty well seasoned. I'll add a touch of salt though and a crank of black pepper, and stir that in. Okay, at this point, we're ready to go ahead
and portion our soup into our traditional
french onion soup crocks. If you don't have these kind of crocks, you could at this point, put cheese on top of the crouton piles, put these back into the oven, portion the soup into regular soup bowls and then use a spatula to scoop all these croutons and
cheese on top of those bowls. But we're gonna stick with
the traditional way today. It's nice to prevent drips if you scrape it on the
bottom of the pot first before you transfer it to your bowl. I'm putting all these
crocks onto a baking sheet, this is gonna make it easier for us to transfer all the crocks
into the oven at once, rather than fumbling around
with individual crocks. Okay, perfect. Now, we're ready for the
best part of the recipe, which is the cheese and the croutons. So, when you're eating this, it should feel slightly indulgent, almost like there's too much cheese, and that means you're doing it right. So, we're gonna start off
with about one cup of Gruyère, we're gonna add and divide
among these soup crocks. So, it's about a heaping
two tablespoons per soup. Now, this is slightly different
than the traditional method where you just put the croutons on top and then the cheese. We wanted to get some of that
cheese into the soup as well. And now we're gonna add our croutons. Scatter them on top of the soup. We're gonna finish with our
remaining cup of Gruyère cheese, again about 2 1/2
tablespoons per soup crock. Okay, and we're finally gonna top this off with a little bit of shredded Parmesan. We shredded this on the
large holes of a box grater, and we have about 1 1/2 ounces here. Again, so it's about a heaping
tablespoon or so per soup. We've preheated the oven to 500 degrees, and we're gonna throw
these crocks into the oven and let them cook until the soup is
bubbling around the edges and the cheese is melted
and gooey and golden brown. Oh, these look gorgeous. Okay, so it's been about seven minutes, you can see the soup is
bubbling around the edges, the cheese is melted, and it looks fantastic, smells fantastic too. So at this point, the soup is extremely hot. You can tell that from all the bubbles. We're gonna let it sit before we dig in, just to give the cheese a
little chance to set up. Okay, our french onion soup has had a few minutes to cool down so we can transfer it to our plate. A lot of times recipes
for french onion soup, you'll see a lot of cheese that's melted down the sides of the crock. I think a lot of that is just for show, 'cause it's completely unnecessary. What we did is put all the cheese in there so we don't have a hard to
clean crock on the outside, and we're gonna actually eat
all the cheese we bought. All right, it's time to dig in. Mm, so good. Although it didn't seem
like very much red wine in the beginning, you can really taste what
it's adding to the soup. It's very complex for so few ingredients. The cheese and the croutons add a lot of textural appeal to the soup. It's perfect for any special occasion, dinner, cold day. It comes together relatively easily after you're done
caramelizing those onions, but the pay off for
that little bit of work is just tremendous. So, for a great version
of this classic soup, start with a solid batch
of caramelized onions, glaze those onions with
a little bit of red wine, and finally cut the croutons
into bite size pieces. From Cook's Country, a special occasion
worthy french onion soup. - Thanks for watching Cook's Country from America's test kitchen. So, what you think? - Leave a comment and let us know which recipes
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