- Hey, I am John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen
we're making French onion soup, so let's get started.
To make this hearty, delicious soup,
you'll want butter, onions, about three pounds of them,
some beef stock, garlic, a little bit of all-purpose flour,
thyme, a bay leaf, salt and pepper,
and brandy and a dry white wine.
We're gonna top this off
with some French bread and Gruyere cheese.
First up, we're gonna slice these onions.
It's four to six large onions, about three pounds.
However, these are onions we harvested
from our veggie garden, and they're a little bit smaller
than the ones you buy at the supermarket.
Luckily, Brian bought some safety goggles,
'cause first things first, safety first.
So now I can chop this, my eyes, my poor eyes, oh my gosh.
I don't care how I look,
I just want to be able to chop all these onions
or slice them thinly without crying.
I was tearing up a storm.
The funny thing is, like, if you're wearing contact lenses,
your eyes are totally protected,
so when I used to wear contacts, I was like,
no, no, no chopping onions, no concerns in the world,
but if you wear glasses or don't have them on,
your eyeballs are not happy.
We harvested these onions in the fall,
so the older the onions get, the more pungent they are.
So we're gonna cut our onions
between a quarter and an eighth of an inch thick.
You don't want them to be too thick
'cause they'll never caramelize.
You don't them to be too thin
because they'll fall apart when they do caramelize.
So just think for thinner pieces of onion.
I mean, it's foggy, there's like no win here.
This soup is so delicious that all of this is worth it.
I'm not used to cutting circles of onions,
and I can see, like, if I do this, so it's fine.
This soup is super cozy.
It's one of my favorite things to eat.
It just warms you up.
The depth of flavor you get from the onions
that are so caramelized and the brandy and the wine,
and topped with cheese and that bread,
oh, it's just the most satisfying soup you could have,
especially on a cold day.
Okay.
Grab three cloves of garlic and give that a mince.
(goggles clatter) (giggles)
Towards the end of your prep work,
your going to be melting a quarter cup of butter
right into a large pot.
Set that stove to medium heat.
This is what my mom calls a drop of butter,
just dropped right in.
So my butter is melted.
I'm adding in the onions now.
(onions sizzle)
The butter started to caramelize a bit, but that's fine.
I love browned butter.
We're also gonna add in half a teaspoon of salt
to give this a start.
Give this one little mix or two,
and then you're gonna cover this up
and cook for about five to six minutes
or until the onions are slightly softened
and starting to release some water.
Aside from just being delicious, this recipe is so amazing
because you can taste the love that you put into it
when you made it.
Look, my onions have softened a little bit.
They're releasing some water.
Now we're gonna leave this uncovered,
continue cooking on medium while we stir
every few minutes for an hour.
That's the deal, but yes,
you have to be in the kitchen for an hour making this
and kind of hovering around the pot.
You don't have to be here the entire time,
but you have to pass by every once in awhile
and just keep on stirring.
If you see your onions burning,
you can add, like, a tablespoon of water
while you're stirring,
but you should be stirring kind of a lot.
And then towards the end of the hour,
you're gonna be stirring, like, every minute,
so just don't walk away and forget about this.
If you've ever seen a recipe
where people talk about caramelized onions
and they're like, oh, cook time, 20 minutes,
they are lying to you.
It's not true.
To really caramelize an onion,
you're taking all the sugars in that onion
and breaking them down and just making them, like,
oh, golden and delicious, but that takes time.
You cannot rush it,
even with, like, your baking soda tricks
and all that sort of thing.
You just have to, like, stir, time, and watch the color.
So we want this to go from being pale and white
to a deep, golden brown,
a little bit browner than you even think they should be,
because when we add the stock in and everything else,
it's gonna dilute the color, and you want them to be, like
so rich and flavorful.
It's like butter, onions, wine, ah, and cheese.
This is like the best thing ever.
I wish you could smell this.
Just keep stirring every few minutes or so,
and then when we come back,
you'll see that the color's changed
and I'll tell you what to do next. (upbeat music)
Just over an hour later,
lots of time in the kitchen stirring away.
Look at this beautiful, dark caramelized color.
This is what you want to see
and this is when you know it's done.
Look at that color.
Now we're gonna add our minced garlic in,
as well as two tablespoons of all purpose flour,
sprinkle that in, and we're gonna mix it all together
and cook while stirring constantly for a minute.
We're stirring and cooking the flour.
The garlic is going to start cooking, as well,
but it'll finish during the simmer.
Now we need a dry white wine.
You can use cooking wine.
I'm using a Sauvignon Blanc, one cup, 240 mL.
We're gonna slowly pour this into the pan,
and while we do that, it's gonna deglaze the bottom.
Look at all this delicious stuff at the bottom of the pan.
That's flavor that we're gonna release with the wine.
Warm up five to six cups of beef stock,
and we're gonna pour this into this mixture
of onions and wine.
Just mix it in.
We're also gonna add our thyme sprigs, a bay leaf
and half a teaspoon of freshly cracked black pepper.
This smells a whole rich and lovely.
I just, like, it's crazy how rich it is
without having, like, any meat in it at all.
It's just the onions providing that flavor.
I'm gonna bring this to a simmer over medium heat
and then continue simmering for about 20 minutes.
You'll notice the consistency changes.
It just becomes velvety and rich.
Right now you have amazing onions in a broth,
but it's gonna come together
and you'll see that change in consistency.
And if you haven't, stir, stir, stir the bottom
and, like, kind of scrape the bottom,
just to make sure you get all those bits of flavor out.
(upbeat music)
Just give it a little taste test.
I am gonna add a bit more salt in for flavor.
Different beef stocks
have totally different amounts of salt.
You might use low sodium or regular,
so we always add a little bit of salt in the beginning
and then more salt to taste towards the end of the recipe.
While your soup's simmering away, we're gonna measure out
three tablespoons of brandy,
right in here.
We're gonna simmer this for a few more minutes
so the brandy, like alcohol, cooks off
and it really melds in there.
Here's the deal.
You've been hanging out
with this pot of onions for a long time.
Chances are, if you're serving it for dinner
or a dinner party or something like that,
you don't want to smell like onions and be bedraggled,
so you can make your soup in advance.
Just warm it up again when you're ready to serve.
When you're ready to serve, set that oven to broil on high
at about 500 degrees.
Grate some Gruyere cheese, cut some slices of a baguette
and grab some oven safe bowls.
These have to go into the oven at really high temperature,
so make sure they're oven safe.
Now we're ready to fill up our bowls.
All the time we took in caramelizing those onions
was so worth it.
Over here.
We're gonna top it with some bread.
You can completely cover your bowl in bread
or leave some of it bare.
Now top with a quarter of a cup
of that grated Gruyere cheese,
and then repeat for the rest of the servings.
(upbeat music)
Once your soups are assembled,
we're gonna place these onto a baking sheet.
You don't want things tipping over.
It can be really difficult to get them out otherwise.
They're gonna go into the oven,
high broil for about two minutes
or until they're bubbly and just turning golden.
And it's so rich, hearty, and just delicious.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe,
and I'll see you in the next video.
If you liked this video, check out my soup playlist.
(upbeat music)