(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.