French Onion Soup Attempt #1

Ingredients
Soup
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 3 pieces
6 large yellow onions (about 4 pounds), halved and cut into ¹⁄₄-inch thick moons
Salt
2 cups water plus extra for deglazing
¹⁄₂ cup dry sherry
4 cups chicken broth
2 cups beef broth
6 sprigs fresh thyme, tied with kitchen twine
1 bay leaf
Ground black pepper

Cheese Croutons
1 baguette, cut on bias into ¹⁄₂-inch slices
8 ounces gruyere cheese, shredded

Instructions
1. For the soup: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 400*F. Generously spray inside of heavy-bottomed large Dutch oven with nonstick cooking spray. Place butter in pot and add onions and 1 teaspoon salt. Onions will just about fill the Dutch oven. 

2. Cook, covered, 1 hour (onions will be moist and slightly reduced in volume). Remove pot from oven and stir onions, scraping bottom and sides of pot. Return pot to oven with lid slightly ajar and continue to cook until onions are very soft and golden brown, 1 ¹⁄₂ to 1 ³⁄₄ hours longer, stirring onions and scraping bottom and sides of pot after 1 hour.

3. Carefully remove pot from oven and place over medium-high heat. Using oven mitts to handle pot, cook onions, stirring frequently and scraping bottom and sides of pot, until liquid evaporates and onions brown, 15 to 20 minutes, reducing heat to medium if onions are browning too quickly. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until pot bottom is coated with dark crust, 6 to 8 minutes, adjust heat as necessary. (Scrape any fond that collects on spoon back into onions.) Stir in ¹⁄₄ cup water, scraping pot bottom to loosen crust, and cook until water evaporates and pot bottom has formed another dark crust, 6 to 8 minutes. Repeat process of deglazing 2 or 3 more times, until onions are very dark brown. Stir in sherry and cook, stirring frequently, until sherry evaporates, about 5 minutes. (I deglazed four times for a total of 1 cup of water.)

4. Stir in broths, 2 cups water, thyme, bay leaf, and ¹⁄₂ teaspoon salt, scraping up any final bits of browned crust on bottom and sides of pot. Increase heat to high and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 30 minutes. Remove and discard herbs, then season with salt and pepper.

5. For the croutons: While soup simmers, arrange baguette slices in single layer on baking sheet and bake in 400*F oven until bread is dry, crisp, and golden at edges, about 10 minutes. Set aside.

6. To serve: Place oven rack 6 inches from broiler element and heat broiler. Set individual broiler-safe crocks on baking sheet and fill each with about 1 ³⁄₄ cups soup. Top each bowl with 1 or 2 baguette slices (do not overlap slices) and sprinkle evenly with gruyere. Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly around edges, 3 to 5 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes before serving. 

Comments
I really love French Onion Soup.  If I see it on a menu and it’s not super hot outside, I’m likely to order it.  However, I’ve never made it myself because no one else in the house likes it the way I do.  With all of the snow we’ve been getting, I decided that there was no better time to make my own French Onion Soup than this week – especially since I’d just seen a recipe for it in the 2008 Cook’s Illustrated Annual.  There were a couple parts of the recipe that I was unsure about, but I followed it to the letter since it’s something I’ve never made before. 

This soup was pretty fantastic.  The multiple deglazings of the onions really yielded a deep, rich flavor to the soup.  That part of the recipe is definitely a keeper for next time. 

Even if the Test Kitchen prefers the taste of sherry to other alcohols for this soup, I’m not sure that I do.  Next time, I’d try using red wine instead, which has been my preference in the French Onion-style casseroles I’ve made in the past. 

I was unsure about the blend of beef and chicken broths, but it worked quite well and the flavor of the broth part was lovely.  However, I think I’d try all beef broth next time, just to see how that works. 

I’d also like the soup to be more… velvety.  Next time I’ll either try adding some flour after all the deglazing or I’ll simmer the soup for longer and remove the lid in step 4. 

Since I was only serving myself soup, I used the toaster oven for the croutons and the final broiling.  This worked very well for a single serving.  The first bowl of soup I made, shown here in a gorgeous crock that our best friend Brian gave us one year, had cheese only on top of the crouton.  For the second bowl I split the cheese and put a bit under the crouton and a bit on top of it.  I think I like the way the second bowl turned out better because the crouton wasn’t completely covered with cheese which let it crisp up a little more during the final broiling. 

I will definitely be making, and tweaking, this again.  It’s a great starting point for my experimentation in French Onion Soup.

Cook’s Illustrated 2008