To Make Great French Onion Soup, do these 2 things

to make really great french onion soup all you really have to focus on is two main things making a great stock and cooking the onions properly the stock takes the longest and if you really want to maximize its flavor you really want to do this ahead of time so the start of this recipe and that stock starts yesterday now when i make a broto on this channel usually i don't roast the bones or the chicken first to keep things neutral but today we want to make a nice dark brown stock so i have some bone marrow some shanks some ribeye bones from steaks throughout the year just gonna spread that on a sheet tray and get that into a 450 degree oven and start to brown those really well a dark stock's gonna give a lot of deep flavor and it's gonna add a lot to something like a french onion soup while it cooks we want to cut up some vegetables we just roughly chop some carrots some celery quarter these onions cutting them through the root end to leave them intact i like to keep the paper on to add some color to the broth and then we just want to quarter up some cremini mushrooms [Music] while the meat's browning you just want to give it a quick check to make sure everything's browning properly and once one side browns nicely we want to give them rotate then pop it back in the oven until they're all perfectly roasted once the bones have really nice color all around we can get that out of the oven and transfer the bones into a large stockpot once the bones are in that stockpot you want to drain that fat we're going to use a bunch of that in the recipe down the road and it's great for a whole bunch of things then we get that stock pot onto the stove and we want to fill it up with cold water and bring that up to a boil and while that comes up to a boil we're going to take our chopped vegetables and add them onto the sheet tray with a little bit of that fat and then i want to work one of these small cans of tomato paste into the vegetables and then we want to lower the temperature on the oven just slightly and roast those vegetables to sort of create a little bit more fond on the bottom of that sheet tray see these stuck on bits right here that's what we're looking for once we got nice caramelization on that sheet tray get it out of the oven and set it aside and by now there should be some scum accumulating on top and if it's boiling we want to drop the heat down to a simmer and we just want to skim off that scum from the top of the stock once we think we've cleaned off the stock enough then we can go and add those vegetables into the stock then you can just add a few ladles full of the stock into the sheet tray and use a flat bottom spatula to basically deglaze and scrape up all those stuck-on delicious bits on that sheet tray that's gonna add a ton of flavor you might need to do it a few times and when it's nice and clean just add it all to the stock pot then we can add some split cloves of garlic some fresh thyme some bay leaf and some fresh peppercorn and we can bring that up to a boil and then drop it down to a simmer i'm moving it over to the weakest and lowest burner and i'm just gonna let this simmer all night for about 24 hours after it's been simmering for about a day we can turn the heat off let it cool down and start to strain out that broth in a separate smaller pot with a strainer a fine mesh strainer works best and once all that broth is strained out we can discard the bones and then we can skim off the fat i like using this fat separator so i can skim off all the fat off the top into the separator and then if i get any stock in there i can just transfer that back into the pot very easily and then i've got a ton of fat that i've removed that i can save for another purpose once the pots cooled we can get that off the stove it's a nice beautiful clear stock with lots of depth and flavor we can transfer that into quart containers and i'm going to save four of those quarts for another use and i'm going to save two and a half quarts for the french onion soup and then we can move on into the next part of our recipe the second most important part which is cooking the onions now a quick word from our sponsor now it's the new year and in light of the past few years we've had i'm very much keeping my health top of mind going forward that includes eating better exercising taking vitamins and why i'm happy to be sponsored today by ritual ritual is launching their new essential protein daily shakes to support maintenance of lean muscle mass and to promote healthy active aging for everyone not just athletes essential protein for 18 and over contains all nine essential amino acids contain 20 grams of vegan pea protein and like all ritual products essential protein is soy free gluten free vegan friendly and formulated with non-gmo ingredients there's no added sugar or sugar alcohols it contains no major allergens artificial sweeteners or colors and it actually tastes really good thanks to vanilla flavor that is hand crafted using direct from farmer vanilla beans and just like all of rituals products their supply chain is fully traceable and transparent so you know what you're consuming get 10 off your first three months of ritual by going to ritual.com backslash cooking and enter the code cooking at checkout to help fuel your body right and thanks ritual for sponsoring this video now back to the recipe so now that our stock is perfect we can focus on the onions now i need three to four pounds of sliced onions at the end so i usually buy probably five five and a half pounds of onions and after you cut off the edges and the ends and the paper kind of equates to about three or four three gives you about the minimum amount of onions you're gonna need in a soup like this so anything above that just sort of amps up the amount of onions that are going to be in this soup the first thing we're going to do is cut the root and the stem off of the onions and get all the paper off and just go through and peel all the onions first get them set off to the side and i'm just using a scale to just sort of just make sure i've got the right amount and you just go through and make your way slicing all of the onions and you don't want to go too thin about a quarter inch thin these are going to cook a lot and really collapse so you want them big enough once they collapse they're going to be fully softened by the time you're eating them in the soup but you kind of don't want them to just vanish and disappear because they were too thin next time somebody tells you that having good knife skills isn't important just remember one time in life you're going to need to cut this amount of onions and having those knife skills might come in handy and if you do this unevenly you're going to have less cooked onions and then more caramelized onions and some might get burnt and some might be undercooked it becomes a whole thing so the easiest thing to do is to just have good knife skills practice and just do it properly you don't have to be perfect you just have to be close enough you're going to get a nice big pot anything heavy something's going to retain some good heat before we start cooking i have a baguette a really beautiful delicious baguette that i couldn't help for me there's never enough bread and the bread is always kind of like i don't know it's never done the way i'd like my strategy is to have nice little kind of hardly baked crunchy croutons so instead of having to cut through the bread with the spoon which is always a pain i'm gonna pre-cut them toast them and then add them to the soup and so it's a better eating experience in my opinion so i'm gonna do is go for like a nice i don't know see it's around the thickness of the tip of this serrated knife and then i'm just gonna cut them in half and then take those and cut them into like little quarters depending on how big your bag is this is kind of a bigger baguette if you have a smaller one you might just need to cut them into little halves [Music] now i'm imagining like maybe that amount in one bowl depending on the size of your bowl later i'm gonna let these dry out cool thing we can do is take a piece of garlic and once they're toasted rub a little bit of the garlic on there so we have these garlic scented croutons that are gonna go in and be super delicious i'm gonna let those dry out while the onions cook which is gonna take a bit of time now i've got my onions and usually i cook this in a little bit of olive oil and some butter which is what my recipe is gonna call for but we made our stock and remember all that beautiful fat that we reserved we're gonna cook the onions in that you can also add a little bit of butter if you want but this is a beautiful beefy flavor that's going to add more beefiness of course if you're keeping this vegetarian and you're going to use a vegetable stock you can just use olive oil i've got this fat and i'm going to use it i get a large heavy bottomed pot on high heat the largest that you've got and then we're going to take that beef fat from the stock and get that into the pan and we really want to heat that up test the oil with one of those slices of onion and once it starts vigorously sizzling we can add the whole load in and we want to start this off on high heat because we just have so many onions we need to get them going a bit season them with a little bit of salt once they start to soften a bit add more fat if you need and we're going to keep it on high heat and just slowly drop the heat down incrementally as the onions begin to collapse hit it with some pepper and then just keep cooking and stirring and getting them moved around as they cook they're going to start to release their moisture that moisture is going to kind of boil the onions a little bit and at that point i kind of like to knock the heat back up to evaporate that moisture and then if i see the pan dry up at any point then i can sort of just drop that heat back down a little bit and then i'm just going to bounce back and forth from high heat to low heat managing it along the way if i see moisture build up i'll knock it back up try and evaporate that moisture you know if there's lots of steam that's that moisture evaporating and if at all any point i see that steam simmering down a bit then i can lower the heat and cook these a little bit more slowly and that they're caramelizing properly until we get that nice brown caramelization on the onions going we want to get like a nice mahogany on the onions we want that moisture evaporated and we want a little bit of fan starting to develop on that bottom of the pan that is indication we're developing a lot of flavor now besides the stock we have a few more things we're going to add to it we're going to add some worcestershire sauce a little bit of dried cherry which is just a fortified wine with some brandy some flour some thyme some bay leaf and once the onions are caramelized and where you want them we're gonna add that flour and cook that for about a minute or two to cook out the raw flour flavor and add a little bit more fond to the bottom of the pan and then we're gonna deglaze with that sherry just make sure you pick up all those brown bits off the bottom of the pan and then we can add in our beef stock [Music] once the beef stock is in we can add the herbs i like to tie it into a little bundle a little bit of that worcestershire sauce we can adjust the seasoning with salt a little bit of black pepper and we want to bring it up to a boil and allow that flour to just kind of thicken and add a little bit of body and structure to the soup and while the soup was simmering i just had the idea needed just a touch of soy sauce maybe a tablespoon or two and it just adds a little bit of that umami that really sets it off to the next level let the soup simmer while we prepare the croutons okay now that the soup is done it's a simmering on the stove we can cook our crouton now i'm only making enough for about two so if you're doing a bigger batch the soup can feed four to six people you're gonna need the whole baguette so we got our bread and we're just gonna nicely coat with olive oil now remember we wanna get these not dark not burnt but overly crispy and dried out because we're gonna just throw them into broth so they're obviously going to get soft but we can make sure that they're super firm before we do that so you know when you make croutons and you can still kind of feel squishiness in them sometimes you take them out a little too early you're too impatient don't do that here the temp's at 425 and when it comes out we're gonna rub it with some garlic and that garlic on that hot bread it's really gonna infuse that bread with a nice subtle garlic flavor not too much it's going to go really nicely with the dish all you have to do is just kind of give it a cut in half so put that off to the side grate our gruyere now this is the good stuff you know because you can see gruyere on the outside menthol or cheese would also work and i'm also going to add some parmigiano-reggiano [Music] and we'll just set this off to the side got some grated parmigiano-reggiano i'm going to hold that off to the side so those are going to be my two cheeses and then i have my crock it's a nice oven-safe crock i'm going to throw this under the broiler i also like that it's kind of like a bowl shape kind of looks like an onion it's kind of deep so i'm going to be able to get like two nice ladle fulls and then a lot of the croutons on top so i'm going to have almost a crouton in every bite of soup which is sort of the ideas like the soup's good but the whole thing is the trio the cheese the crouton the soup and the onion that's what i'm going for in every bite so we're designing that ahead of time rotate the croutons check them regularly and make sure that they're browning perfectly and when they're nicely golden brown and crisp all the way through and fully dried take them out there we go nicely toasted you can take our garlic clove just give each a little rub croutons are ready [Music] beautiful nice rich golden color thick now you want to get the broiler turned on and you want to adjust the rack inside the oven to make sure that you've got enough room for the crock to fit under the broiler without it being too close or too far away then we can go ahead fill up our crock with the soup and we want to make sure we have a little bit of room left on top so that we can fit in a nice hefty amount of our crouton i made a mistake i would recommend adding a layer of cheese in between the croutons and the soup first then adding the croutons on top and then going heavy with the gruyere on top of the croutons and then a little bit parmesan cheese on top of that and then pop that under the broiler until that fully melts and gets nice and caramelized and browned you want to pull that out of the oven garnish with some fresh chives and then you're ready to enjoy one of the best french onion soups you're ever going to have see how you get a nice spoonful of bread that's what i'm talking about absolutely superb french onion soup head on down to the description there'll be a link to my website for the full recipe if you want to support the show make sure you head on down to ritual.com and check out their protein shakes that's all that i have today i'll see you next time until then take care of yourself go feed yourself [Music] for more comfort food recipes got a few more on the screen right now like this beef stroganoff that you've really got to try and thank you for watching

Channel: NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW

Views: 83,486

Keywords: french onion soup, french onion, how to, how to make french onion soup, french onion soup recipe, soup recipes, onion soup, french onion soup at home, best french onion soup, easy french onion soup, ultimate french onion soup, how to cook french onion soup, caramelized onions, brown stock, how to make brown stock, best french onion soup in the world, not another cooking show, stephen cusato, the food freak

Id: 05w8MoCtclM

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022